


The Varied Adventures of Ms. Anne Lister

by DPS



Category: Gentleman Jack
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Ann Walker is a cinnamon roll, Anne Lister with Feelings, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Energy, Quotes from Ms. Lister's Diaries, historical fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:04:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DPS/pseuds/DPS
Summary: “Uh-oh. Dr. Belcombe will be here in 20 minutes,” Anne said, reality setting in.But before her mind could reel even further, a small hand was grabbing her pocket watch out of her hands. Unable to be too cross, Anne reached up to grab the stolen watch from Ann, who was clutching it with an impish grin on her face.“Oh,” Ann giggled as they tussled in bed, fighting over the pocket watch and playfully shoving each other’s hands out of the way.“Oh, Ann, no” Anne chuckled, amused at her lover’s annoyance with her timepiece, until Ann tackled Anne back onto the bed, the two of them pressed tightly together. Anne was unused to anyone being above her, but she enjoyed the delightful weight of Ann on her.Glancing up at her timid lover, Anne wondered if she lacked the courage to initiate any further intimacy.Apparently not; Ann gave as good as she got and the giggles swiftly turned into a sighs from both parties.••••This story follows the episodes of Gentleman Jack with switching perspectives between the Ann(e)s because hey-ho.I do not claim ownership over the direct quotes taken from Ms. Anne Lister or the creators of Gentleman Jack (BBC).





	1. Prologue: Anne’s previous lovers

**Author's Note:**

> The amazing Helena Whitbread, who revealed the contents of the Lister diaries, said Anne had earned her place in history. She praised Anne Lister's “outstanding courage, fearless enough to approach life on her own terms and fashion it to her liking, according to the nature which, as she saw it, God had endowed her." Thank you Helena for your tireless work translating Anne's diaries over the span of 30 years. 
> 
> Many of these quotes and concepts are my own and are, as such, fictional. I do not claim ownership over the direct quotes taken from Ms. Anne Lister or the creators of Gentleman Jack (BBC).

 

_Prologue: Anne Lister’s Lovers_

 

**Eliza Raine (1804-1806)**

 

Despite being locked away in the attic at the Manor House boarding school, Anne could no longer complain as she pressed incessant kisses into the warm neck of Ms. Eliza Raine, her bunkmate, peer, and respectable friend. 

 

Respectable on all accounts but one. 

 

As the two fifteen year olds rutted against one another, flinging petticoats, stockings and drawers aside to delve into their newly awakened bodies where they ached the most, Anne reflected on this vast improvement of her once secluded state as Eliza gasped quietly into her ear as she began to reach the peak of her pleasure, improved by Anne’s kisses and flying fingers. Hmmm, lovely. 

 

“Oh, Anne,” Eliza sighed, folding onto Anne’s arms tightly as she writhed beneath her. With each dalliance, Anne learned quickly the best ways to please the feminine body. Kissing her neck gently and arching her palm just so into the aching bundle until Eliza began to shake beneath her with a soft moan of unabashed enjoyment as she peaked. It never took too long with Eliza. 

 

After holding the panting girl for a while longer, Anne leaned over the bed to snatch her brand new diary from where is was lying, momentarily forgotten, upon the floor. 

 

“Why are you always writing, Anne?” Eliza asked in a timid voice, glancing over at her lover with a pout on her beautiful face.

 

Distracted, Anne responded glibly: “don’t you enjoy our letters to one another?” 

 

Eliza nodded and fell silent, watching Anne’s quill dance across the rough page, ink mixing with the wetness from Eliza’s body over her hands. Anne paid this no mind, as she drew her newly coded x’s across the page to symbolize her lover’s satisfaction.

 

“What do the x’s mean? What are all these symbols?” Eliza asked, cuddling into Anne’s chemise with a contented sigh for a moment before rolling back to her side of the small cot, still in a hedonistic daze from her crisis. 

 

Anne, in an uncommon moment of candor, explained: “I am developing a system of greek letters and Algebra symbols to write about my, well our, exploits so that no one will find out if they happen upon my journal. I plan to write about my every experience, my every study, and my… Well, you understand, don’t you?”

 

“Anne, that seems terribly clever, but what if someone learns how to read it? Your code, I mean.” Eliza cocked her head to the side, her silken hair flowing over the pillow as the two girls stared at one another.

 

Anne reached over to brush a strand from Eliza’s face and smiled at her nervous lover: “That, my dear Eliza, will never happen. I’m too clever, far too clever to be locked away at this Manor house for domesticated future wives,” she huffed, crossing her arms and glaring at the ceiling to show her displeasure at being sent away for being too wild. 

 

Eliza smiled in response, tucking her head under Anne’s arm and resting her head upon Anne’s chest: “you won’t be here forever. And once we leave, we can set up home together and be in a proper relationship just as we promised one another.”

 

Anne kissed her forehead and the two girls fell into a restful sleep, unbeknownst to them that the next day their detailed letters would be found and they would never be together again.

 

“It’s preposterous!” Anne ranted as she threw her boots into her suitcase, “romantic friendships are utterly commonplace. It helps ‘prepare us for marriage’ and all that nonsense. The gifts, the letters, it’s all fine! It’s natural!” But even as she said it, Anne knew that the declarations of serious intent in the letters were too bold to ignore. “Odd” is what the teachers had called the whole affair.

 

Eliza sat upon Anne’s cot in the lonely attic, tears dropping down her cheeks in despair as she watched her only friend prepared to leave, desperately twirling one of Anne's handkerchiefs in her trembling hands: “don’t forget about me Anne” Eliza pleaded, “We will be together, I will stay true to you, just as we promised.”

 

Anne kissed her hands and smiled, shushing her young lover and lying down beside her, holding Eliza as she cried and ruminating on what would become of her, a rejected Indian girl in a land far from home. 

 

As Anne pulled away in her carriage the next day, Anne's first love affair came to an end. Anne stopped writing letters to Eliza shortly after leaving the manor house in York.

 

Over the next two years, Anne continued to study Greek, Latin, and Algebra at home toimprove her education, writing in her journal: ”My library is my greatest pleasure... The Grecian History had pleased me much.” Anne continued to be tenacious with her education and refused to be shackled by the poor education of women during the time.

 

Eliza, the illegitimate daughter of a doctor without a position, was no longer the ideal wife that Anne dreamed of one day having. She wrote, “I am determined to have all that a man can possess, including a suitable wife.”

Anne was determined to rise above the shackles that nature had put upon her through her gender and position in society. She would not be cowed. 

  

 

* * *

 

 

 ** Isabella ‘Tib’ Norcliffe (1810-1814**  **) **

 

“January 22, 1814

Isabella Norcliffe is, undoubtably, a drunk,” Anne scribbled one evening in frustration, pushing back the dark curls that fell in her face as she vented her frustrations with Tib at her desk: “She continually vexes me by demanding a commitment, but how can I be committed to a drunk with little social standing? Beyond that, I care about her friendship more than any other aspect of our time together.”

 

So engrossed in her writing, Anne did not notice the outline of said Ms. Norcliffe in the doorway, stabilizing herself upon the doorframe and watching Anne with a tightening expression.

 

“Come away, Anne,” Isabella requested softly.

 

Anne looked up sharply but, met with the sight of her dear friend, she sighed in acquiescence and rose to take her hand and lead her to bed: “You must stop imbibing so much drink, Tib.”

 

“I know, I know Anne. You won’t leave me, will you?”

 

Anne kissed her harshly, and, without answering, laid her down and ran a hand up underneath her skirt. _Women are so easily distracted, when you know how to handle them_ , Anne thought.  

  

“February 3, 1814

This same night, Tib introduced me to a Mariana Belcombe; a doctor’s daughter with little money to be sure, but she had a wit about her. I should like to see her again, very much.” Anne punctuated the phrase and rose, a smile etched on her face and a manic energy about her. Her green skirt flowed about her legs as she soared around the room, for once not resentful of her ridiculous clothing.

 

 _Mariana_ , she thought, _A beautiful name, to be sure_.

 

Again, Isabella watched silently at the door as Anne mouthed 'Mariana' over and over with a beatific smile over her handsome face. And Tib knew, just knew, that she had lost the attentions of Ms. Anne Lister. 

 

 

 _Tib and Anne remained friends and occasional lovers throughout the remainder of Anne’s life. Anne’s rejection of her as a life-partner was a bitter blow to Isabella, who remained single all her life. As Isabella would come very much to regret, it was she who introduced Anne to_ _Mariana Belcombe, the woman_ _who would become lifelong lovers with Anne._

 

 

* * *

 

  

** Mariana Lawton (nee Belcombe)- (1814-1832) **

 

“Miss Lister, may I introduce you to Miss Mariana Belcombe,” Tib said with a pleased smile. 

 

“How do you do, Ms. Belcombe?” Ann asked in a practiced manner, grasping Mariana’s raised hand in a decidedly gentlemanly fashion, bowing slightly with a smile. 

 

“Much better now, I’m sure,” she laughed in response, letting her fingertips linger before she pulled away entirely, her eyes twinkling,“and please, call me Mariana.” 

 

“Anne!” Anne blurted before taking a breath, “please, call me Anne.” Their eyes locked as they exchanged Christian names, and it was as if the room around them was blurred out and rendered insignificant.

 

They talked the entire night, wrapped together in a cozy corner of the ballroom while Tib glared at them from various vantage points. It was of little matter to Anne, not a single problem could be ushered to the forefront of her mind while in the pleasant company of Miss- of Mariana. At twenty-three, Anne had never seen such beauty mixed with cleverness in a woman. Mariana, as the elder of the two, shared her fascinating insights of the world and Anne hung on her every word. 

 

Despite being only slightly older than Anne, Mariana had a maturity about her person which attracted Anne instantly. Equals; they could be equals in mind and spirit. 

 

Anne knew she could forgive Mariana’s humble upbringing as a doctor’s daughter if they were to be equals in companionship. No longer would Anne be called upon to be the instigator. She would be met, blow for proverbial blow.

 

The two women spent increasing amount of time in each other's company, finding reasons to touch on another and sit closely, "you have a small bit of debris in your hair, I will get it," and "there is a bit of jam on your cheek just _here_." 

 

“Come Ms. Lister,” whispered Mariana after another night spent in each other’s company by the dwindling firelight, “it is time for bed, is it not?” 

 

"Y-yes, it is," Anne whispered, and her heart thumped quickly as she followed her newest lover up the stairs.  

 

Between kisses and sighs, Anne called Mariana, "beautiful." Mariana, always pragmatic, called Anne, "my clever dear." 

 

They would travel forty miles between York and Halifax to see each other and exchange rings as a symbol of their intention of marriage. 

 

“You will be my wife, Mary,” Anne whispered as they stood together out in the garden at Halifax, smiling widely at the thought. Her wife. 

 

“Hmm, yes,” Mariana whispered, tucking the ring away and gently lowering herself to her knees in front of Anne, smirking as she stuck her head beneath Anne’s skirts, “with all the wifely duties accounted for.”

 

‘Oh, Mary.” 

 

Two years passed in absolute bliss. Anne was utterly besotted with Mariana, calling her “Mary” and “M” in her diary entries. Mariana called Anne “Fred” in a moment of playful acknowledgment to Anne’s role as the man in their relationship. 

 

One day, completely unexpectedly to Anne, Mariana announced she was getting married to a wealthy widower Mr. Charles Lawton.

 

Anne was heartbroken beyond compare: “Why Mary? Why would you marry that old man when you are meant for me? When you are promised to me, under God?” She jammed a finger at her chest and held onto the doorframe for dear life as Mariana pleaded with her, her face in utter misery. 

 

“I must marry him,” she tearfully explained, “but only for financial stability. And normalcy. Honestly Fred, people talk!" Mariana explained hysterically. Taking a deep breath, she continued, "But I can still be with you when you need me, we needn’t cut ties altogether.”

 

“I can give you financial security!” Anne retorted, her voice growing heated, “and it also has to do with the lands, carriages, and status. Do not deny it, not to me! I will not be kept to the side! The adulterous lover to be met for secret assignations when it pleases you! I wont Mary.” 

 

Anne was heartbroken, writing in her diary: “Oh, women, women!” she wrote. “I am always taken up with some girl or other. When shall I amend?” 

 

Mariana went through with the marriage and Anne was in a state of grief, calling her marriage “legal prostitution.” Anne wore black to the wedding and decided to wear black henceforth. No more girlish facades, not anymore. She would wear black cravats and top hats to make her seem more manly, more ostentatious, despite her lack of a wife. 

 

Anne kept her word- there were no meetings or inappropriate relations for one year. One year apart was all it took for the two women to begin an adulterous affair that would last for another seven years.

 

Anne’s appearance grew more severe as she reached her thirties- her collars higher, her skirts less voluminous, and black was the primary color she adorned. She spread her legs like men, taking up space in any given seat or room that she liked. She smoked, drank, and ate just like the men she had observed in gambling halls, while still maintaining a certain dignity required of the landowner of Shibden. Once her Uncle James had passed, she was the owner of Shibden and, as such, had one of the largest estates in Halifax. 

 

One summer evening, she rushed twelve miles to meet Mariana’s coach, exhausted from the day but nevertheless anxious to see her sweetheart. Caked in mud and smiling widely, she thrust open to door of the carriage to see her lover. Mariana, observing the judgmental looks of her servants, reprimanded Anne quite severely once they had arrived back at Shibden. 

 

“You’ve really given Halifax something to talk about with your emotional display. Honestly Fred, do you even think?” 

 

Anne was taken aback by her love’s harsh temperament, but agreed to go away on a holiday with her in Scarborough to repair their damaged relationship. During their stay, Mariana was invited to tea by a group of gossiping locals who described the two women’s relationship as peculiar due to their closeness and Anne’s manly appearance.

 

“Honestly Anne,” Mariana raged once she returned, flinging off her gloves and unpinning her bonnet in their hotel room, “I do wish you would be more discreet!”

 

“Discreet? Darling, what do you mean?” Anne asked, still lounging on the bed with ink staining her fingertips from her most recent diary entry, "we are friends, we act as friends do out there."

 

“You are so- so mannish!” Mariana yelled, stalking around the bed to stand over Anne with a look of contempt marring her aging features. 

 

“Mariana, I have always been this way, I shan't change” Anne said quietly, looking down at her coded entry from just this morning about all the pleasures they had brought one another. 

 

Equals. They were meant to be equals. 

 

“Do you- that is, would you want me to change? Be more feminine, wear the crinoline and the lace? Utterly reject my own nature to please those people?” Anne asked, her eyes flashing with sadness and pique as she looked about her lover. 

 

Mariana looked Anne up and down and then nodded, resolved, “yes Anne, I would like you to be how you once were; true you were never girlish, but you didn’t appear to be a- a- a freak!” 

 

“I thought my cleverness was enough for you!” Anne bawled, her hands fisting in the bedsheets as Mariana leveled her with cruel words- the cruelest Anne had ever encountered. 

 

Mariana reached out for Anne’s face, and it was then Anne realized she was crying. 

 

Anne slapped her questing fingers away: “I could never be the girl that I was, even for you Mary.”

 

Mariana looked at Anne for a moment before sitting down beside her on the bed, “I know, Anne. And you are clever. But why must you always stand out, why can you not try to fit in?”

 

Anne looked out the window to the dreary streets of Scarborough below, “because that isn’t who I am, Mary. It isn’t who I am.” 

 

Mariana took her hand and kissed it in apology. Anne watched the affectionate gesture dispassionately. Once that simple affection would have soothed all her ills, but now it left her feeling empty and wanting. 

 

She wanted a companion, a true companion, now more than ever.

 

 

* * *

 

 

** Maria Barlow- (1824-1826) **

 

Anne began to travel widely in her early thirties. She went to Paris with the intention of learning the language, immersing herself in the culture and, hopefully, meet a sophisticated, wealthy woman during her scientific studies.

 

And while Maria Barlow, a widow from Guernsey, wasn’t exactly the titled demoiselle she had envisaged, she fell for her “ladylike and pretty” new friend regardless. She was shy, and utterly the opposite of Mary; therefore, she was perfect for Anne. 

 

"It is lovely to meet you, Ms. Lister," Maria said with a bashful smile and a heavy accent. Anne simply smiled and replied, "please call me Anne, my dear." 

 

Among walks in the park and suggestive conversations, Anne quickly had Mrs. Barlow in her bed. 

Anne wrote in her diary: “I had kissed and pressed Mrs Barlow on my knee till I had a complete fit of passion... My knees and thighs shook, my breathing and everything told her what was the matter.” While Maria was originally hesitant, Anne was quick to seduce her with a gentler, but still forceful, manner. 

 

She went on: “Then made several gentle efforts to put my hand up her petticoats which, however, she prevented…But she so crossed her legs and leaned against me that I put my hand over and grubbled her on the outside of her petticoats till she was evidently a little excited.”

 

Or more than a little. 

 

"Oh. Oh. Oh, Anne, please!" She pleaded while panting, her thighs rubbing together over Anne's hand and her cheeks red with embarrassment and arousal. 

 

"Please what, Mrs. Barlow?" Anne asked innocently, her eyes sparking with mischief as the woman continued to rub herself on Anne's, now unmoving, hand. This was one of the sweetest moments for Anne, the moment before- 

 

"Please undress me! Take me," Maria's voice dropped to a whisper as she turned her head in the opposite direction in timidity. Anne smirked in triumph and hurriedly turned her over, unlacing Maria's corset and stroking over each inch of revealed skin. 

 

But, despite their fiery affair in Paris, Anne quickly grew bored with Maria's countenance and went back to Shibden, leaving another heartbroken woman in her wake. 

 

* * *

 

Finally, Anne met Vere Hobart in 1830 who, unbeknownst to her, would be the last woman Anne would encounter before meeting her future wife...

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Driven to her mental breaking point by her own poor mental state, Eliza was sent to an asylum and died there in 1869.


	2. I Was Just Passing

 

_“I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs.”_

 

_Outside ofHalifax, West Yorkshire 1832_

As they bumped along in the carriage, Ann stared out the window with a deep sadness resting upon her, her shoulders slumped from the weight of her melancholy temperament. Her aunt, sitting imperiously beside her, paid her no mind as they traveled steadily along the road towards Crow’s Nest. Ann spotted the Tutor styled home resting just beyond the hill outside her window. 

“Shibden Hall,” her Aunt remarked quite suddenly. 

“Mmm,” Ann hummed in response, still admiring the quiet beauty of the home before her. It was quite different from Crow’s Nest in Lightcliffe- darker, a bit shabbier to be fair, but it had a comfortable look to it that was not always present in large drawing rooms with ornate wallpaper that decorated her home. Yes, Ann believed she could have been contented living on an estate such as Shibden, in a different lifetime. 

“Ever been inside aunt?” She inquired, curious as ever.

“No,” her aunt responded with a chuckle, “the Listers do not invite people, as a rule.”

An established family that did not invite quests was quite rare indeed, as it was considered poor manners, especially in a provincial town like Halifax. Ann was not quite sure what to make of such a proclamation, and fell briefly into silence. 

It did not last a moment: “I wonder why though,” Ann thought aloud. 

Her aunt glanced over at Shibden Hall and then back to her niece: “Well, they’re all a bit odd.” 

Before anything else be said, there was a scream and the carriage tipped violently to the side. Shouting out, Ann and her aunt grasped at one another in the chaos. But the little Hardcastle boy, who was sitting just above in the open air, was thrown from the carriage and into the ravine down below.

They were saved by Marian and the Lister servants who came to their aid and soon Ann found her self sitting in the Lister drawing room- a moment she had always longed for. 

The person she had longed to see, however, was notably absent. 

“Will you have some brandy, Miss Walker?” Miss Lister’s aunt offered kindly, and Ann shook her head in reply. She did not need anything else to shake her nerves. 

Before anything could be said, the elder Miss Walker turned to Marian with praise: “You reminded me Marian, when you and your servants came to rescue us, of your elder sister Miss Lister. Calm, decisive, and all together prepared.”

Ann’s aunt missed Marian’s eye-roll at the comparison to her eccentric sibling, but Ann witnessed it with a deepening frown. Where had Miss Lister gone now? 

Her aunt asked about Miss Walker’s whereabouts in the next breath and Ann listened intently: “Why, she had set up home with Miss Very Hobart as a-” a heavy pause, “a companion, but she is on her way home now by various friends’ houses,” Aunt Anne finished quickly, and her aunt wore a serious expression at the turn of the conversation.

Why did Ms. Lister’s aunt pause over the word companion? How odd, Ann pondered.

“Yes, something went wrong in Hastings,” Mr. Lister added with a disapproving tone that puzzled Ann. 

Anne’s aunt added: “England is barely big enough to contain her. She will travel.”

Why was her own family so critical of her travel and companions? Ann looked away, staring out the window and feeling the familiar melancholy rise in her. Surely the elder Miss Lister was quite the woman as the owner of Shibden Hall and the surrounding lands. She was a respected figure in the community. 

Yes, she was respected indeed. After hearing that Miss Lister would be home at the end of the week, Ann felt goosebumps spread over her arms and an unfamiliar sensation bloom in her chest. Miss Lister had been away a long while, Ann herself had not seen her since she was nineteen, but oh, the figure she struck. 

She was always a remarkable person with her beautiful black clothes, telling wild, fascinating anecdote’s about her travels and various adventures climbing mountains and such. 

Ann was shaken from her musings when Ms. Lister’s aunt interjected:

“So much drama, always, with Anne.” 

“It’s uncanny,” Marian complained to the room at large, “However far away my sister goes, however long she’s gone for, whatever crises is happening here she always, within minutes, she manages to inveigle herself into becoming the main topic of any given conversation.”

Ann thought that this was quite true indeed, but she was not annoyed by the fact as Marian seemed to be. In fact, any mention of Ms. Lister was welcome where Ann was concerned. Ever since she came to tea after the untimely death of her brother and parents, Miss Lister had never been too far from Ann’s thoughts.

 

* * *

 

Anne gazed over her lands with a critical eye. She was perspiring from driving the gig all the way into Halifax, but she insisted on walking the two miles to Shibden nonetheless. Surveying her lands, she could only perceive the issues that needed to be resolved: “I’ve been an Icarus, flown too close to the sun,” Anne whispered to herself, feeling bereft, “and now I’ve crashed back to to earth at Shibden. Shabby little Shibden, and my shabby little family.” 

She stalked through the pasture, up the walk, past Argus and the open carriage, _why was the carriage out in the weather?_ With a deep breath, and a loving kiss to her aunt and less enthusiastic kiss to her sister, she whisked through the open door to face the inevitable. Her family. 

She was in Shibden with a singular goal in mind- she was there to marry a suitable heiress and shore up Shibden as an estate to be proud of. Not a shabby farm house, but an estate that was worthy of being upheld in the eyes of the community of Halifax and Yorkshire. 

After pleasantries were exchanged, Ann excused herself to go and unpack from her travels. Pulling out her journal, she reflected on her most recent disappointment in love. 

Vere. 

Even thinking her name in passing set Anne’s teeth on edge and caused a sharp twinge the run through her chest; the woman had reopened all the wounds from Mariana’s infidelity with Mr. Lawton. Another marriage to a ridiculous buffoon. Another man deemed more worthy of providing love, security, and normalcy than her. 

Two of the three were, evidently, not enough. 

Anne read her own account from her journal:

 

_“Sunday, the 15th of April, 1832,_

_The truth is out. She will go to Italy, but not with me._

_Vere’s words: ’I’ve invited Donald to dine with us this evening… He’s asked me to marry him. I shan’t say no.’”_

 

Pushing back tears of despair, Anne recalled the utter hopelessness she felt leaving Hastings empty handed. She had thought that Vere would be the one- she had money, looks, and had aristocracy in her bloodline, a perfect companion. 

And yet, she was not like Anne. Not in “that way.”

That way being a woman who is undoubtably, unreservedly attracted to the fairer sex. 

She was _allowed_ to love Vere, to worship her body and attend to her needs, but she was not worthy of that same love and affection in return. The nights of lonely satisfaction and crosses written in the margins of her diary were enough proof that Anne was not attractive enough to lure Vere’s attentions. Too many times writing: “incurred a cross last night” in her journal, acknowledging her shame for base human pleasures that she was denied by all but herself. 

But oh, despite it all, Vere had come so close to becoming the companion Anne had always craved. 

Looking into the glass beyond her bed frame, Anne acknowledged that she was not a beautiful woman. She was striking in her manner and dress, to be sure, but she was not attractive by anyone’s standards, men or women. Touching the small wrinkles beside her eyes, Anne felt…

Old. Sitting upon the floor of her bedroom at 41 years of age, she felt unaccountably old and in need of a companion to settle down with. The seductions of her youth all felt like follies to her now, and she wanted to live properly under God with her wife. 

Not a man’s wife, but her own. 

Hearing a knock at the door, Anne rose from where she lay on the floor.

“Yes?”

Her aunt appeared: “We thought you might have joined us by the fire for a few minutes in the drawing room.”

Anne fidgeted under her aunt’s loving, but still disapproving, gaze at Anne’s anti-social behavior. This was why she avoided coming home- responsibilities, sentiment, it was all foreign and uncomfortable. 

“I would have, but-“

Her aunt raised her hand against any other excuse: “I know we’re not interesting.”

Anne’s eyes welled up in long fought tears, and she paced heartily into her aunt’s open arms: “It’s not you aunt,” she proclaimed with a shaking voice, “it’s never you.” 

“What happened in Hastings, with Ms. Hobart?” 

“N-nothing,” Anne whispered. She laid her head down on her aunt’s shoulder and gave in to what she had been fighting back since Hastings- tears. 

Her aunt, never directly acknowledging Anne’s obvious distress, continued speaking: 

“Miss Walker’s such a curious little thing… Painfully shy. Odd the other day, the accident, and the aunt is rather vulgar.”

Ann sniffed as she continued: “The whole affair is just odd, because Miss Walker must be one of the most eligible young woman in Halifax. So alone, and isolated, with at least 3,000 a year. I felt really very sorry for her,” her aunt tutted to herself, “Of course she is surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins to guard her fortune but I think what she really needs is someone to care for her, never mind the money.” 

As Anne continued to listen to her aunt, a plan because to unfurl in her mind. _Miss Walker, with 3,000 a year, all alone and shy and susceptible… Interesting. She was no great beauty the last time we met, very awkward, and she was rather insipid... Well, perhaps I could drop by for tea, just to look in._

But first, she needed to collect her rents. 

Composing herself and rapidly kissing her aunt on the head, Anne flew off to her study, a squawk of “Anne, where are you-“ following behind her as she slammed the door and set to work.

 

* * *

 

Ann watched the little yellow canary singing in its cage and sighed in solidarity with the animal as the (rather too familiar) Doctor Kenny took her pulse. 

She watched the little creature sing: a beautiful bird in a gilded cage. A familiar state. 

As the doctor and her aunt discussed plans to send her to the Lake District with cousin Catherine, as if she was an inanimate object and not present in the room with her own opinions on her health, Ann felt her familiar nervousness well up within her. 

She was helpless, even to stick up for herself. 

“You miss Elizabeth, don’t you?” Her aunt asked in a sickly patronizing voice, finally looking at Ann for the first time. 

_Of course I miss my sister,_ Ann wanted to scream, _she is my last connection to my parents and brother. The last person who I trust to care for me, and not just my sizable income!_

She said none of it, of course, and simply sat there in silence, gazing back out the window as she listened to the doctor’s final diagnosis:

“Sometimes, the best thing one can prescribe isn’t medicine, but a little bit of adventure.” 

Ann rolled her eyes heavenwards and looked back at her canary. Adventures were for happy people who were able to live life, not simply exist as she does. 

Besides, what adventure could possibly await her here in Halifax?

 

* * *

 

As Mariana stared, rather flirtatiously, across the dinner table from her, Anne could not remember why she had ever felt angry at her. This woman, sitting in her jewels and beautiful regal gown across from her at the plain dinner table at Shibden, had been in her life for over a fifteen years. The woman who introduced her to adult pleasures, properly. 

The first woman she ever truly fell in love with. 

Around the table they discussed funding the coal pit, and Anne’s (rather brilliant) plan to run the estate for profit, and not simply in the ineffective way it had been run before as a source of bleeding income and revenue.

Marian rejected her plan at every turn, insisting Shibden was  their home (plural possessive) and that Anne should acknowledge that fact. 

But it was Anne whose entire being was wrapped up in the running of the estate; its success or failure was a direct representation of her own success or failure. _Shibden is hers, resting on her land, and therefore, she has a duty to improve it and those who live upon it. Ugh. Marian is always so emotional_ , Anne thought in aggravation before stating: “Leave any sentiment out of it, Marian. I need people who can farm efficiently to help prop up the estate. Let me run the estate how I see fit.” 

Mariana was looking around the table nervously as the siblings squabbled back the forth. 

“Mrs. Lawton doesn’t want to hear this!” Mr. Lister barked in aggravation. 

As her aunt asked Mariana about how Charles, the buffoon, was fairing, Anne watched her long time lover describe her husband as “irritable” and felt a small thrill run through her.

_Of course he is irritable_ , Anne thought with a sense of satisfaction, _you should have chosen me when you had the chance._

The two women’s eyes met and Anne felt a small smirk pushing at the edges of her lips and she drank another sip of wine and her middle finger danced along the edge of her glass. There was a promise of _later_ in that look, and Anne was giddy with excitement.

 

* * *

 

Mariana, back in her bed, naked and willing. This took Anne back to the days of gasping orgasms in the back of carriages to York and two young, giggling girls in their twenties on their way to parties. How young, how gay they once were.

 

_ "Anne, Anne you mustn't," she begged, the flush in her cheeks and smile on her face belaying her rejection. _

_ "Oh, must I not, well then," Anne replied casually, beginning to rise from where she was prostrate on her knees before Mariana in eager anticipation as the carriage rocked them back and forth, back and forth, the vibrations and each other's company causing the two women such arousal.  
_

_ "Well," Mariana bit her plush lips in thought, and Anne sank back down, "what if the servants hear us!" _

_ Anne looked up at her lover, and seeing the uncovered want in her eyes, smirked and replied: "Well then, Mary, you must be quiet." Anne began unwrapping her cravat, pushing back up Mariana's voluminous skirts to find the slit in Mariana's drawers and quickly placed her soft mouth on the swollen, aching center of her lover. _

_ "Anne! D-don't," Mariana gasped, her head falling back against the seat. _

_ "Don't?" Anne whispered, placing small kisses up and down the dark curls and wet core of her love.  _

_ "Well-I mean," Mariana gasped when Anne took her aching bud between her lips and suckled, "I, oh, Anne, don't stop!" _

_ Anne licked through her folds and whispered: "I won't stop. Not ever, if you don't want me to." _

_ Mariana couldn't her her proclamation through her own gasps, and it was just as well. Anne would have felt embarrassed by the sentiment in the morning.   _

 

Now, however, those carefree days were gone. Now they were settled, or rather unsettled, aging women who had been affected emotionally and physically by the ravages of time. Still, there was something thrilling about a married woman in her bed, moaning for the pleasures that no man could bestow. They always, always fell to her calculated seductions; she was a generous lover, after all. And her study of anatomy in Paris had been extremely informative- bless Mrs. Barlow.

And now, clutching Mariana’s nude form to her clothed body, Anne rigorously rubbed her palm in a rocking motion that she had learnt so long ago while she thrust two deft fingers up, up, up until she found that spot just there…

“Ah! Anne- yes!” Music to her ears. 

Thrusting in and out of her soft, wet apex with her fingers, and rubbing her rough palm against her engorged bud, Anne kissed her neck and revealed in the gasping woman in her arms. 

How she had loved this woman. 

“Ah- oh, oh, yes!” She began to peak, her pleasure gushing around Anne’s fingers as she continued to thrust at the same velocity as before, fucking her through her climax with a satisfied hum and a sense of achievement that always followed a bedfellow’s relief. 

Anne continued to ease Mariana through the spasms of amoroso until she had calmed. Biting back a (sexually) frustrated sigh, Anne rolled back over to her side and the bed and checked the time, writing down Mary’s orgasm in code and how long it had taken Anne to achieve it. It was methodical, it was calculated.

It helped her avoid the sentiment of it all. 

Hmm, 7 minutes and 32 seconds- she needed to practice, she was getting slower. 

Throwing her arm behind her head, she finally relaxed down on the pillows and Mariana, always a talker, because to berate her about her Miss Hobart and that Anne should get married so she could “have everything she wanted.”

As if her marriage to a man was not wholly repugnant and unnatural. 

Mariana persisted as Anne’s mood grew blacker by the second: “I tell you these things because I care about you, because I love you, and there’s probably no one else that would.”

Anne scoffed in response. If she loved her, truly understood her, she never would have left. Never. 

Rolling over and sit astride her lover, Anne felt the giddiness of girlhood rise in her as she said: “Let’s go to Paris- leave Charles.” Oh, the life they could have together! Back to the days of adventurous liaisons in hotels, carriages, and flirtations at parties. 

“Why are you always on the run, Fred?”

As if an ice bucket had been washed over her, Anne grumbled and returned to the present, rolling back over to her side of the bed and felt as if she were a thousand miles away. 

“I’ve often felt like you are running from a world that only sees how odd you are and not how clever you are.”

_Like you, just like you Mary. Don’t deny it_ , Anne thought viciously. 

Verbally, Anne dismissed the claim that other human beings rejection mattered in the slightest to her, with only a brief catch in her voice to suggest otherwise: “Mediocracy and banality are the only things that have ever really frightened me.”

How she wished that were true. 

Mariana sighed: “If and when you do find someone, someone who will defy the lot of them, they will be a very special and particular person. I just worry that person doesn’t exist, not in this life.”

Grabbing her chin, Anne forced Mariana to look at her and admit to her sinful jealousy: “You’re happy for that, my loneliness, and then tomorrow you’ll leave me.”

Turning her back on her occasional, sometimes, married lover, Anne huffed and tried to sleep, even as Mariana rubbed circles on her back with a tenderness Anne was unused to from her blunt friend. 

She pitied her. Mariana felt sorry for her. How revolting, sad, and utterly abhorrent.

 

* * *

 

Mrs. and Mr. Priestly sat in her sitting room for tea as the subject of Miss Lister was raised. 

“My wife is rather a fan of Ms. Lister, Miss Walker,” said Mr. Priestly with a fond smile towards his wife. 

Mrs. Priestly nodded with a smile: “I’ve always been a great champion of Miss Lister- I appreciate her clever mind and adventurous spirit.”

How lovely that someone else appreciated Miss Lister! Ann felt quite relieved as Mrs. Priestly continued: “It’s true, she isn’t always as feminine as people would like her to be, but she’s an original. She’s natural. She’s true to her own nature.”

Mr. Priestly nodded in agreement. 

“We can hardly blame Miss Lister if nature was in an odd freak when she made her.” 

When asked if Ann had ever met the eccentric landowning woman, she replied: “I have, yes, I was nineteen when she came to tea after my parents had died. She stayed for an hour or two, but we never saw her again.”

Why had she never seen Miss Lister again? Thoughts and doubts swirled around her head for a moment before her company drew her back to reality. 

“We should go visit her while she’s here- you should come with us Ann. It would do you good,” Mr. Priestly added in a paternal tone, and Ann felt an unfamiliar smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. 

She would see Miss Lister again.

Mrs. Priestly continued praising the eccentric woman as Ann beamed: “She is so kind. She is a good friend to have.” 

Ann’s pulse began to race and a bubbling sense of unfamiliar excitement rose within her. She was going to see Miss Lister for the first time in a decade. 

How…. Well, how unaccountably exciting.

 

* * *

 

As Dr. Kenny released confidential information about Miss Walker’s nerves and her spinal weakness, Anne felt her irritation growing with the impertinent doctor.

“I hope you don’t discuss member of my family with your other patients, Dr. Kenny.”

He looked quite baffled at Anne's tone and accusation and took a step back as Anne inserted herself on the bed where her aunt lay with her aching leg. 

After a moment, her aunt announced: “Marian should go over to see Miss Walker, to give her some younger company.”

Anne inwardly scoffed at the mere suggestion and, while rubbing her aunt’s foot, replied: “surely Marian is more likely to bore someone into a paralytic stupor.” 

“Why don’t you go?” 

Anne sighed: “I took tea with a Mrs. Walker once, before the elder went to Scotland, and they were dull and stupid, I was not anxious for their company again. And they were certainly no oil painting.” 

Dr. Kenny looked shocked at Anne’s harsh words towards the Walker family, and her aunt tutted disapprovingly. 

Mrs. Cordingley knocked on the door and announced: “Mr. and Mrs. Priestly are here with a Miss Walker, of Crow’s Nest.”

“Well, well, well,” Anne mused aloud, her mind racing and the odd coincidence. 

Fate had always loved the play tricks upon her.  _ Let’s see what this Miss Walker has developed into since I’ve been away,  _ Ann thought,  _ Perhaps _s_ he isn’t as dull and stupid as she once appeared.  _

Pacing down the stares in her usually quick manner, she created the Priestly’s warmly with a firm handshake.

“Miss Walker mentioned that you were back, but we hardly believed it!” Mrs. Priestly tittered with a warm smile on her face. 

_Ah yes, the dull and stupid girl_ , Anne recalled, prepping herself to face the girl she had met so many years before. 

Turning around, she gazed at Miss Walker in a beautiful pink day gown, her golden hair piled on her head with ringlets cascading around her smiling face. She was… Well, Anne had to remind herself of her manners so she didn’t stare at the girl in shock. She looked like the sun, glowing skin and hair with a healthy plumpness to her cheeks and lips.

Not to mention her ample bosom.  

Where was the awkward young girl she had seen? She was nowhere in sight as a beautiful, breathtaking woman stood in her place. 

“Mm- I’ve heard so much about you lately,” Anne remarked, a bit breathlessly, as she reached out a hand to grasp Miss Walker’s own. She felt rather cold to the touch, but her smile lit up the dingy sitting room. Anne felt herself ask how Miss Walker was fairing, and the girl blushed slightly at Anne’s attention and looked down bashfully.

Hmm, Anne always liked the innocent ones. 

“I-I’m very well, thank you.”

“Good,” Anne replied to the feeble response, unable to tear her eyes away from the fair beauty that was utterly out of place at Shibden.

Sitting down as close to Miss Walker as was situationally appropriate, she began to discuss the Reform Bill that Marian was so utterly ill-equipped to discuss.

“Women have never been directly denied the vote before, now it will be written in a statute. Universal male suffrage,” she exclaimed with a shake of her head. 

“I have 30 odd tenants that can vote but I, the landowner, may not,” Anne felt the familiar rise of the indignity of her sex within her, and pushed it down. She glanced over at her young visitor who was resting beside her, and she felt she could not altogether loathe the indignity of her sex. 

Not when it came in such beautiful forms such as Miss Walker. 

“But surely it has always been that way,” Mr. Priestly added, and Anne caught herself before she rolled her eyes at his typical patriarchal response. Of course he would not question it, it did not affect him. He would never be denied the vote. 

How irritating. 

Anne continued on, edifying on the indignity of the Reform Bill and involving Miss Walker in her plight: “you may not vote, and how many tenants and rolling acre’s do you own?” She asked the young beauty beside her.

After watching the poor thing grapple for a response, Anne interjected in her usual abrasive fashion: “exactly. So many you don’t even remember. Yet no vote.”

As Marian babbled on about the importance of breaking down class systems, Anne stole peaks at Miss Walker out of the corner of her eyes until her aunt began making her way downstairs. Perfect.

She stood and offered her aunt the seat she had been comfortably pressed against Miss Walker in, a new plan unfurling in her mind. 

“I wanted to thank you, again, for your kind hospitality,” Ann spoke quietly to her aunt, who seemed utterly charmed by the young woman, “the other day, in our moment of distress.”

Dr. Kenny interjected: “How are you feeling my dear.”

“Hmmm,” Ann looked down in obvious discomfort at the Doctor’s attentions as she took a seat and Anne quickly, reading the situation, inserted herself before the Doctor could sit down to a glass of Madera: 

“No, I would like you to look at my carriage horse, He’s glandered,” she explained, perching herself on the arm of the chair next to Miss Walker, close enough to feel the heat from her body almost pressed against her own. Anne saw Miss Walker’s mouth curve slightly upwards at the slightly rude way the Doctor was being addressed, and she felt a sense of triumph. 

Dr. Kenny, looking somewhat taken aback, bowed slightly and made his way out of the room slowly, just as Anne whispered: “Tick Tock.” Miss Walker giggled at that, and Anne smiled down at her. 

“Odd little man. Make’s me suspicious,” Anne said suggestively, looking at the blonde curls adorned with a pink flower. How sweet, how gay she looks. 

“Of what?” Miss Walker asked innocently.

“Not sure,” Anne assured, backing off from her indecorous tone slightly in the face of Miss Walker’s innocent nature. 

She must be gentle with this one so as to not scare her off. Oh, how lovely she appears. How easy a temperament, how moldable to Anne's vision of a wife. 

Mrs. Priestly announced: “you must be careful, Ann. Miss Lister keeps a journal. She records everything in great detail.”

_ Hmm, too true.  _

Mr. Priestly quaffed loudly: “Stay on the right side of her, or you’ll end up in her journal.”

Anne smirked slightly, gazing down at Miss Walker just as the shy girl met her eyes and brown irises met blue: “You don’t have to offend me to grace the pages of my journal. Sometimes I write about people I really like.” 

The girl smiled, a blush blooming on her cheeks before she looked down timidly, with a small smile still gracing her features. Anne felt the thrill of the chase rising within her breast.

_Shall I make up to Miss Walker? I can see that the poor girl already seems thoroughly in love with me._ She thought with a crow of satisfaction, _What she lacks in rank, she certainly makes up for in fortune. Shall I stay here, in Shibden, and endeavor to make wealthy Miss Walker my wife? Hmm._

And so, the very next day, Anne walked the twenty five minutes to Crow’s Nest, her black skirts swinging and she raced up the stairs and rang the doorbell. As the door opened, Anne asked:  “Miss Lister here to see Miss Walker, is she in?”

Taking off her top-hat and passing over her walking cane to the butler, Anne entered the ornate house to begin her seduction.

The game begins.


	3. I just went there to study anatomy

_"Miss Ann Walker of Crownest overtook me, having run herself almost out of breath. Walked with her as far as the Lidget entrance to their own ground and got home at 6:40…Made myself, as I fancied very agreeable and was particularly civil and attentive in my manner. I really think the girl is flattered by it and likes me.”_

 

Striding into Miss Walker’s sitting room, Anne prepared herself for her current diversion from her coal troubles with the Rawson brothers. She steeled herself to act in a soft, yet gentlemanly, way towards the young, impressionable Miss Walker to earn her affections as quickly as possible without frightening the poor girl. 

And Anne knew how to make a favorable impression.

Miss Walker’s servant James introduced Anne as she strode confidently into the drawing room, her shoulders back and her face adored with a friendly smile: “Miss Walker.”

“Miss Lister,” Miss Walker responded with a beatific smile of her own, her beauty highlighted by the sunny surroundings of the drawing room. 

“I was just passing,” Anne remarked in an slightly apologetic fashion, but Miss Walker waved it away and, remembering her manners, asked Anne to “please come in. Sit down.” 

“Do you know, I haven’t been in this room for years.”

Miss Walker smiled in response, “You came to tea with my sister Elizabeth shortly after my mother died, I don’t know if you remember.”

As she spoke, Anne took a turn about the room, feeling quite anxious at the budding of a new romance, however superficial her intentions. 

Perhaps, perhaps. 

Miss Walker excitedly continued, turning and watching Anne as she strode about her sitting room: “We walked in the garden, You probably had no idea at the time, but you made my whole world a little brighter that day. I remember it very fondly.”

“I do remember it. I remember everything,” 

_Honestly, I can barely recall any of this_ , Anne inwardly admitted while maintaining a smile on her face. 

“Well, do you remember me running after you?” 

Anne sighed where she stood facing the window and turned, a rather disingenuous smile resting on her face, “remind me?” 

“I was so embarrassed about it afterwards. I’m quite glad you don’t remember it,” she laughed lightly and Anne walked slowly closer to her. 

Miss Walker continued, oblivious to Anne’s intentions: “It was on the Lightcliffe road, I chased after you to invite you to tea. Afterwards I thought, oh, how silly and foolish I must have seemed to you,” she ended with a self-deprecating tone, her smile dimming slightly as she looked away, as if remembering herself. 

To reestablish the light mood, Anne pasted on a smile and leaned in: “Now that you’ve said it, I only remember thinking how animated you looked.” At the praise, Miss Walker’s expression settled back into contentment. _She is terribly pretty when she is happy and peaceful, isn’t she?_

Shaking those thoughts away, and reminding herself of her goal, Anne asked: “Shall I sit here?” 

Miss Walker sat less than an arm length away, and Anne quelled a smug grin at the girl’s eagerness. 

_Well, well, well indeed Miss Walker. This may be easier than I planned._

 

* * *

 

As she and Miss Lister sat on the couch in her drawing room, Ann could not recall the last time she had felt so, so… Well, to use Miss Lister’s word, so animated. 

After inquiring about her sister, Ann explained: “we write to one another, but she has three little ones now, so she is quite busy.”

“Ah, motherhood,” Miss Lister intoned, “what a… delight.” She finished her thought after a pause, looking down at her hands with a nervous chuckle. From Miss Lister’s tone, it sounded as if she were describing laboring in the coal mines when she described motherhood, and Ann was quite inclined to agree.

“I quite like children, but the idea of-”

“Of-” Miss Lister prompted, looking confused. 

“Giving birth” she whispered, “is not something I want,” Ann finished lamely, her voice shaking in embarrassment. 

“Ah,” Miss Lister nodded, “Yes, well, it was never something I was quite inclined to do.” 

Both women looked away for a moment, an awkward silence settling over the cheerful room. To break the growing noiselessness, Miss Lister excitedly said: “I dissected a baby once!”

Ann, looking at her with growing horror, chokingly replied: “sorry?”

“In Paris. It was dead. Obviously,” Miss Lister added, and Ann let out a breath of relief. 

Miss Lister had a manic look about her eyes, leaning towards Ann. She could smell Miss Lister’s odd scent from here- a heady mix of ink, grass, and a spice-filled cologne. 

Shaking her head to focus, Ann listened as Miss Lister spoke: “This was four years ago. I am fascinated by the science of Georges Curvier and anatomy in general. I couldn’t attend university officially, being the wrong sex, so he gave me private instruction during my time there.” 

Miss Lister seemed lost in the memories of her anecdote, and as Ann gazed at her, she was struck by how, albeit unconventionally, fair Miss Lister was when she was explaining her passions for travel and science. 

“I am fascinated by the human body, especially the brain. When you see one, it’s just meat, offal like the rest of our corporeal form. Right now, everything you see, hear, think, feel, desire in any one moment is retained in this lump in your skull… If you think about it, isn’t it amazing that we can think at all?” 

Whilst speaking vividly and quickly about her fascination with the brain, Miss Lister gesticulated widely about the room, pointing out the windows, towards Ann, and all that she could see while she explained her study of the brain. 

_How extraordinary she is,_ Ann thought with a shudder of delight. 

Miss Lister was still orating, her eyes taking on a sparkle as she conferred her knowledge to Ann: “The brain of even the smallest animal is ridiculously sophisticated, but the human brain is extraordinary. We have language, we build cathedrals and cities and society. We write music and poetry.” Here, Miss Lister took a breath, and gazed at Ann so intently that she felt as is Miss Lister could see all there was to see about her. She felt quite exposed, and Miss Lister continued: “We fall in love.”

_Thump, thump, thump_ went Ann’s heart. So loud in began to drown out Miss Lister’s beautiful words.

Oh god, what if _she_ can hear Ann’s heart pounding at her mere words? At her company, at her everything? After a moment, Ann could once again make out the words spilling from Miss Lister at a rapid pace. 

“… Isn’t every moment an inexplicable delight, packed with potential.” 

Ann smiled warmly, her heartbeat still racing, and simply responded: “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

After hours and hours of discussing everything from ridiculous relations to travels to boarding school experiences, Anne was quite taken by the (quite cheerful indeed) Miss Walker. 

“Why were you send away from the Manor House in York?” Ann inquired, never having heard of a girl being sent away from a proper finishing school before.

Shaking away memories of Eliza, Anne replied: 

“I don’t know if you’ve realized this, Miss Walker, but I am not well suited for pouring tea and darning my husband’s socks,” Anne joked, and Miss Walker giggled sweetly in response, shaking her head in acknowledgement. 

Anne went on: “thank you for calling the other day with the Priestly’s to thank my aunt. She was very appreciative.”

Miss Walker looked down bashfully, as she always did when she was praised.

“Yes, well, thank you for saving me from Dr. Kenny and his…. intentions,” Miss Walker confided, “did you know that he can be rather, well, inappropriate with women?”

Anne shook her head, “No I had no idea.” She laughed at Miss Walker’s scowl of contempt towards the county doctor, her nose scrunching up adorably, and swore to never allow him to be near her again. 

“I was so relieved when you sent Doctor Kenny out to look at your horse. He’s awful,” Miss Walker exclaimed with an infectious laugh, covering her mouth with her hand to stem her giggles. 

Charming. 

Anne laughed alongside the young woman and replied: “well, I could see he was bothering you.” 

“He’s never touched me, as such,” said Miss Walker, fast to protect the man’s reputation, “it’s just the way he… looks, where he shouldn’t,” she confided in a low voice, a flush rising up her neck and into her pale cheeks. 

Whilst looking away, the sweet thing didn’t see Anne’s eyes settle far below the appropriate level. Oh how soft, how round, and how oblivious their owner. But no matter. 

When Anne explained that Miss Walker should no longer send for Dr. Kenny, she explained the interference of her family who were there to ‘guard her fortune.’ 

Anne scoffed to herself- we will see about that. Interfering relations at their finest. 

“I didn’t know you were related to the Rawson’s,” Anne remarked, surprised at this development. 

“My family has been very adept at strategic marriages over the years. Yet another reason why I’m such a disappointment to everyone.”

Ah yes, the role of a woman who should marry and breed. Exhausting business. But still, Anne could see that her perceived failure in these feminine regards weighed heavily on Miss Walker. 

Miss Walker continued, her self-deprecating tone growing: “They all have opinions, even when I barely see any of them!”

_All alone, in this enormous house, with no one to call on her. How isolated, how sad she must be here. I should fix that,_ Anne thought. 

“Miss Walker,” Anne began, “you are an intelligent, ah, twenty nine?” 

“Mmhm,” Miss Walker nodded.

“Twenty nine year old woman with substantial, seriously substantial independent means,” Anne gestured around the beautiful room the two women were occupying, “which doctor you choose to patronize is a matter for yourself.” 

After a beat, Anne grabbed the girl’s hands in her own, “and yourself alone.” 

Miss Lister nodded, a bit shocked at Anne’s bold, familiar gesture: “Yes, you’re right, but when one has been an invalid, or at least has been seen as one, it’s hard to shake off some people’s ideas that they have the right to interfere.”

Anne felt quite confused by this. Does she mean her spinal weakness? Surely that was nothing truly distressing: “Invalid, how? You don’t look very invalid to me-” Anne replied softly, stroking the girl’s soft hands within her own. 

How perfect they fit together, long fingers tangling together amongst soft, reassuring touches. She watched as Miss Walker began to deftly, so slowly, lean towards her. 

_Time to go._

“Good lord, I haven’t been here four hours,” Anne laughed, drawing her hands away with a reassuring smile, “How did that happen?” 

“Oh, well, I’m not sure,” Miss Walker responded, sounding quite despondent that Anne had pulled away. 

Quelling a smirk, Anne looked down to compose herself. Then standing up and swiftly donning on her overcoat, Anne inquired: “May I call again tomorrow?”

“Really?” Miss Walker asked disbelieving, her eyes wide as a doe’s.

Good lord, this girl was sweetness encapsulated. It was positively cloying, but in the best way. 

As she walked home to Shibden, Anne reflected on her time spent with Miss Walker. There was nothing wrong with her, at least nothing that a little spice of matrimony wouldn’t cure. _All she needs to do now is to realize that the nature of what she feels for me is love._

“Miss Lister! Good afternoon, ma’am,” Mr. Washington called. 

Back to business.

 

* * *

 

As she stared around the table at her family’s, frankly revolting, eating habits, Anne decided that it was time to make an announcement. 

“I’m going to make some improvements to the estate. I thought I’d run them past you father.”

“In case I have an opinion-”

“What? Ah, yes, I’m going to construct an ornamental walk from the garden gate down the Hall Ing down the side of Calf Croft, and into the Lower Brook Ing. Then at the top of-“

“Why?” Marian asked, an expression of utter confusion on her face. 

“lower Brooke Ing- because it will look elegant, Marian- I’m going to build an ornamental moss house, or a chaumiere, just a small one.”

“What for?” Marian scoffed just as their father asked: “A what?” 

“A chaumiere. Like a summer house-“

“A shed, you mean?” Marian remarked, rolling her eyes and slurping her soup once again. 

Rolling her eyes heavenward, Anne continued, “then, at the same time, I’m going to put up all the hedges in the field to make more of a park, a parkland.”

Holding up her hand against her families complaints, she added: “because, I am sick of the place looking like an old farm.”

_Especially if I have to bring home a wife who is used to the finer things in Halifax._

“But it is an old farm,” Marian refuted, look around the table at her aunt and father for support while Anne glared at her before continuing.

“Shibden Hall is the oldest house in Halifax, it dates back, as you know, to Henry V and Agincourt it’s where the first manorial courts on Halifax were held. It saddens me, deeply, that some people might see it as such. We are Listers,” She added, gazing imperiously about the table as her family stared at her in disbelief, “and Shibden is our ancestral home.” 

“It should always reflect the quite dignity of our ancient lineage,” she finished grandly, taking a sip of wine. Marian rolled her eyes and her father and aunt looked quite shocked at the proclamation, stunned into silence for the rest of supper. 

 

* * *

 

The next morning, while walking in the garden at Crow’s Nest with Miss Walker, Anne was unsurprised to learn that she had been taken advantage of financially by her family members. Asking a few pointed questions, to which she only earned more baffled looks and responses from Miss Walker, explained the situation clearly. 

“What you need, Miss Walker,” Anne replied, grabbing hold of the girl’s hands again, “is a well worded letter.”

A half and hour later, Anne felt quite accomplished as she watched Miss Walker’s anxious temperament fade away with her signature at the end of the letter. 

“You see it would’ve taken me three weeks to even compose a well written, clear letter like this. And then, I would’ve been so anxious sending it, I would have thrown it in the wastepaper basket and lent him the money anyways-”

Anne sighed, “You’re a very kind, good natured person-”

“And likely never see it back-”

“Who just needs a little self confidence,” Anne added finally, looking down Miss Walker with a kind smile as she folded the letter to send to her money grubbing relative. 

“If he writes you back, let me know and I will dictate another response,” Anne assured the girl, “or perhaps, if he sends a response, you’ll have the confidence to compose something yourself.” Anne smiled as she rose from the desk, her ornate violet day dress sweeping across the floor of the library as they moved to sit down.

“It is confidence, isn’t it. I never had any,” Miss Walker remarked sadly, sitting down and telling Anne all about the holiday her aunt had arranged for her and her cousin to the Lake District the following week. 

_ Wait, what?  _

“And I adore my cousin Catherine, she’s my best friend, she gave me that paper knife,” she gestured to the ornately carved knife sitting beside Anne, who promptly picked it up to observe it, her aggravation growing. 

“How long are you going for?” She asked, attempting to soften her tone. 

“Three weeks and three weeks is a long time, even with someone that you’re fond of and-” the girl continued to explain her anxieties about the trip with her cousin, that her cousin might become annoyed with her company- _as if that could happy, as sweet and kind as she is_ \- and Anne felt an anger rising in her that she hadn’t felt since-

_Snap!_

“Oh! Good lord, I’m so sorry,” Looking down, Anne saw a trickle of blood flowing down her palm and the broken pen knife still grasped there. 

“Don’t worry! You’re hurt, you’re bleeding!” Miss Walker exclaimed.

“It’s nothing, I can mend this-“ Anne tossed it down in aggravation and took the handkerchief Miss Walker handed her. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Miss Walker dismissed. 

“I can replace it.” Bitter failure welled up in Anne as she stared at the blood on her hands. She hadn’t had enough time with the girl to allow their feelings to blossom and now, now. 

“If you like, but-”

Anne continued rapidly: “Because whatever I replace it with will never have the same sentimental value, if she is such a dear friend.”

Miss Walker looked at her from where she sat and for a moment, just a moment, Anne thought she saw a look of understanding pass in her eyes. 

Jealousy. Acceptance. Tenderness. 

She smiled, “Oh, I-I think it would.” Kneeling down before her, she said: “Here, let me.” Holding the handkerchief to Anne’s wound, Miss Walker gazed down at her hand while applying such gentle pressure, as diligent as a nurse. 

Anne was not quite sure what to make of it, this care. This attention. The acknowledgement of her jealousy over Miss Walker’s time away with her cousin, with another female companion who was not her. She was angelic, in a way, tending to her. Comforting her. 

Shaking her mind of these thoughts, Anne reminded herself of her goal: an heiress. A beautiful girl in her bed. Nothing more. 

But before she could consciously think, she heard herself ask: “Do you want to come to Switzerland with me?” 

“In the spring, I can’t go any sooner with my aunt with her leg as she has ulcers and Shibden with the renovations I’m planning, but I’d like to be in Rome for Easter, for the carnival.”

Miss Walker smiled up at her, still tending to her hand: “I’ve never been abroad.”

“Well then,” Anne whispered conspiratorially, clutching Miss Walker’s small hand to her own, “you’ve never lived.”

As Miss Walker continued to talk about her sister, Anne observed the young girl and pondered. _I see I must be uncommonly and fastidiously delicate in leading her into my own ways, but I believe I shall succeed with her._

 

* * *

 

Another day spent with the scintillating company of Miss Lister. She had called around regularly since the first visit, and Ann felt tickled that someone as worldly as Miss Lister should want to spend her days with her. She was currently amusing Ann with stories of her time abroad, in Paris. 

“Pocket holes? For the theatre?” Ann asked, curious as to what they could possibly be. 

“Yes, sewn in especially, and only for a specific type of theatre,” Miss Lister explained with a curious smile upon her face. 

“What for?”

“Well, I asked this lady I’d met, Mrs. Barlow, and she,” Miss Lister paused, glancing down shyly, which was certainly out of the ordinary for the bold woman, “I can’t tell you, it’s too outrageous.”

“Tell me, please tell me, you can’t hint at something so intriguing and then not say it,” Ann remarked. 

“Well,” Miss Lister drawled, “It’s very French. Only in France. No, only in Paris,” she laughed, and Ann joined in. How lovely it was to have such a friend. 

Miss Lister began to whisper, her voice growing lower and slower as she admitted her secret, “Well… Apparently, it’s so a man might pleasure himself,” she made a lewd gesture with her hand, “without drawing attention to himself. In certain places.”

It took Ann a moment to understand, replaying the vulgar motion Miss Lister had just portrayed, the words swirling around her mind, and suddenly she felt herself consumed by a fiery blush rising and settling over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. 

Oh, lord. 

Miss Lister, ever one to tease, remarked with a laugh, “oh, you’ve gone red, I shouldn’t have told you.” 

Having her embarrassment pointed out increased it ten-fold, but she didn’t feel humiliated. No, she felt rather…. warm. Uneasy, in some way. 

“That’s not true," she gasped out, disbelieving. 

“Of course it’s true, it’s Paris. It’s why people go there!” She exclaimed, and then, a bit more seriously, she added: “Not me, obviously, I just went there to study anatomy.” 

Miss Lister’s face had also taken on a slight flush and her eyes looked far away for a moment before she whispered:

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” 

Ann, who was looking down bashfully at her hands, glanced up to peer into Miss Lister’s brown eyes for a moment before darting down to stare at her lips and back up. 

Oh. 

“Ah- no.” She admitted, biting her lip. She hadn't really kissed anyone, not anyone she wanted to, anyway. 

Miss Lister continued her line of indelicate questioning: “Perhaps you wouldn’t tell me if you had.”

Ann perked up at that, a question of her own rising to her lips: “Have you?”

“I asked you.” She deflected, and Ann knew, just knew, that Anne Lister had probably kissed many people. She was too adventurous of a person not to. 

“Good lord, how did we get onto that?” Ann spoke, staring down at the floor with a shy smile gracing her features. 

“Well, have you never wanted to.”

“Only to see what it was like. Have you?” Ann was desperate to hear all about Anne Lister's life.

“Wanted to? Yes.” Miss Lister admitted, her head cocked to the side as she look directly on at Ann, unembarrassed. 

“When?” Ann asked, curious and eager to know more about this side of Miss Lister. 

“Yes- every time I come here.”

_What? That can't be correct. There are no men at Crow’s Nest? Beyond James, and he is hardly Miss Lister’s type. Who could she have possibly met?_

“What do you mean?” 

Miss Lister reached up and gently, so so gently, stroked over her lips with her thumb and whispered, “I think you know what I mean," she trailed off, and Ann gasped slightly, her lips parting under Miss Lister's attentions, "I think you’re a little bit in love with me.”

“I, um,” Ann stuttered, her mind drawing a blank. 

After a moment, Miss Lister drew back, concerned: “Are you alright?”

“Y-yes.”

“Did I overstep the mark?”

“No-”

She sighed and leaned away, looking utterly dejected: “I’ve offended you-”

“No, I-”

“I’ve embarrassed you, would you like me to go?”

“No!” Ann exclaimed.

“Well then,” Miss Lister took a breath, and with a guilty expression, asked: “have I misread it?”

Gazing into her deep brown eyes, Ann felt a moment of realization bubbling in her chest. 

“No, I, I do have very warm, tender feelings for you. I don’t know why…. Oh, lord.”

Miss Lister sighed deeply and pulled away, when all Ann wanted was for her to come nearer. She explained: “I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll be in a thousand miseries between now and then, thinking that I’ve overstepped the mark or that I’ve horrified you or that you despise me.” She looked down at the ground, and Ann felt utterly helpless. 

“I could never despise you, Anne,” Ann said, grasping at her courage and using Miss Lister’s christian name: “Please don’t ever imagine that. Not for a second.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” She whispered back, in a host of miseries that she could lose her closest companion. 

Anne, sensing her distress, leaned forward and took her hands in a familiar gesture, remarking: “You don’t need to be frightened.” With a smile, and a nod, she was off. 

Ann stood by the window of Crow’s Nest and thought of nothing but Anne Lister.

 

* * *

 

 

As Anne left Crow’s Nest, putting on her top hat and cane, she was in high spirits.

_I think, by and by, she’ll fall into my view of things admirably, now that she’s realized that you can fall in love with another woman. Well, me,_ she thought smugly, _And I really do believe if she’s fond enough of me, and manageable, might we not be happy._

Mrs. Priestly, over tea in her sitting room, remarked: “She alienates people, people who care about her. She’s naive, and overly nervous that people are after her money. What she really needs is a good friend, someone older and more worldly-wise than Miss Catherine Rawson. And perhaps,” Mrs. Priestly smiled over her teacup at Anne, “she’s found one.” 

Yes, yes perhaps she has.

 

 


	4. Oh is that what you call it?

 

_“Could not sleep last night. Dozing, hot & disturbed ... a violent longing for a female companion came over me. Never remember feeling it so painfully before ... It was absolute pain to me.” _

Just as Miss Walker had foreseen, the complicated nature of attending yet another one of her lover’s weddings did sort itself out. Holding back tears during the service, Anne pondered her own failure as she watched another woman, one of _her_ women, take another man. Vere plunged yet another ache into her heart by saying she “wasn’t that way” when Anne confronted her to wish her and Donald well.

No, no, of course she was not “that way." No one else was “that way.” Nature was indeed in an odd mood when she created Anne. The dichotomy between her form and her mind occasionally tortured her at night, tossing and turning between the sheets, but she soldiered on during the day as she must. As God willed her to do. 

But enough. Enough living in the past, with obsessing over Mariana and Vere, it was time for a new pursuit. With the thrill of the chase rushing through her veins, Anne called Eugenie forth while flinging off her hat and pulling off her gloves with a newfound vigor.

“We’re going to the Lake District,” she instructed, grinning madly as she imagined the look on Miss Walker’s face at her arrival. She needed the feel alive, and remember she was still able to charm her way into getting what she wanted. 

And god, how she wanted the girl. 

Despite Catherine’s bent nose at their holiday being so unexpectedly altered by Anne’s appearance, the three women had an absolutely lovely time in the Lake District (well, Anne and Miss Walker did, and that’s what counts). Walking along the waterfront and painting watercolors in the misty surroundings was quite romantic. 

Quite romantic indeed. 

Anne found herself pleasantly frustrated, never having any time alone with Miss Walker to pursue her declaration from the week before: _“I think you’re a little bit in love with me.”_

The- _bold, daring, dangerous_ \- declaration echoed around their every interaction, every accidental touch across a teacup, and every sustained look over the breakfast table. 

And yet, with every coy smile, every blush invoked, and every praise uttered, little Miss Walker’s affections seemed to grow for her. Always calling for her when she wandered too far away, always seeking her opinion in regards to her watercolors, “well, what do you think Miss Lister?” She never took off the gondola pin Anne had given her. 

All in all, the trip was wonderfully productive and was effective in ensnaring Miss Walker even deeper into her thrall. Yes, Anne felt quite assured that she would succeed with her. 

But soon, too soon for Anne’s liking, the three were on their way back to Halifax.

Immediately after the trip Mrs. Rawson and her elder daughter, Delia, paid Miss Walker a call, having heard the distressing news of Miss Lister’s unaccounted appearance on Catherine and Miss Walker’s excursion. 

“Do come in, how nice to see you,” Miss Walker remarked, all smiles, as James showed them into the drawing room. _My she does look radiant in the sunlight_ , Anne thought to herself before turning her smile to the Rawson’s once again and extending her hand. 

Despite the awkward pause, Mrs. Rawson did meet her outstretched hand with a slight twist of her mouth and an overall sour expression upon her face. So, she was here to warn Miss Walker off of her. 

“Miss Walker is very well indeed, better than she has been in a long time,” Anne said, hey eyes meeting Miss Walker’s pale blue ones with a grin. She would not be put off that easily. 

“And you, how are you?” She asked sincerely, looking at Delia and tilting her head slightly as the lovely girl stammered for a moment before responding with a practiced formality. 

_Hmm, she is quite pretty as well_ , Anne thought to herself as she invited the room to sit down. It was not quite proper, as it was not her sitting room, but she did so enjoy being in control over social situations where others tried to regain the upper hand. 

After volleying back and forth about potentially leaving, “as you have company,” the Rawson women did eventually (and reluctantly) sit down. 

As Mrs. Rawson talked about the benefits of the Lake District, Anne continued gazing at the younger Miss Rawson. 

“You do look remarkably like your sister,” she interrupted Mrs. Rawson's drivel, conversationally, “except the lips, I think, are fuller.” Anne finished, grazing her own lips with a little grin as she pondered aloud and watched the poor girl turn quite pink at the intimate attention. 

Out of the corner of her eyes, Anne could see Miss Walker stiffen slightly beside her. Jealousy. 

Perfect. 

“How surprised we all were, however, Miss Lister,” Mrs. Rawson barked, calling Anne’s attention back to her and away from her daughter. Anne watched it all with a smile upon her face and a carelessness about her body as she sat, “when Catherine told us how you turned up, so unexpectedly.” 

_Ah, the tribe is concerned_ , Anne mused.

Aloud, she responded: “Oh! But I adore the Lake District, wild horses couldn’t keep me away, any excuse. And besides,” she turned to face Miss Walker, “I had nothing else to do that day.” 

She laughed, and Miss Walker and Miss Rawson joined in with jovial giggles of their own, both of them peering at Anne quite fixedly with mesmerized looks in their eyes. 

Anne suppressed a smirk at the women’s adoring gazes and continued to regal Mrs. Rawson  with stories of their travels, watching with satisfaction as her ire grew until she soon excused herself and her daughter from their company.

“Alone at last,” Anne remarked, to which Miss Walker laughed and looked down, a pleased smile gracing her lips.

 

* * *

 

Ever since their trip in the Lake District, Miss Lister had been walking to Crow’s Nest to see Ann almost every day. As their friendship grew over the following weeks, the two women agreed to use each other’s Christian names. 

“We are friends now, after all, aren’t we? We should use familiar terms of address with each other now, surely,” Miss Lister commented casually, popping a blueberry into her mouth one afternoon as they strolled through the garden.

With a warmth growing in her heart, Ann stammered: “y-yes, we are friends Miss Lister.”

Anne gave her a side-look for a moment before she realized what she had said, “oh, ah, Anne, I meant!” 

They looked at one another before bursting into laughter, Anne’s voice deeper and richer than her own, causing a tingling feeling to rush down her arms. 

“Thank you…. Ann,” Anne added her name to the end, smiling with her teeth showing and a strand of dark hair falling from its tight coil to move in the breeze. Without saying anything further, Anne reached forward and brushed a questing fingertip across the edge of her lips, ignoring the gasp her touch ignited from the younger woman. 

Letting her fingertip rest upon her lower lip for a moment longer, Anne pulled away and continued strolling up the small path as if nothing had occurred, calling behind her shoulder: “you had a stain from the blueberries we’ve been devouring.”

_Oh, I thought she was… Well, I’m not sure what I thought_ , Ann mused, touching her lip where Anne had just touched her. Feelings of confusion and disappointment welling in her stomach as she watched Anne walk away, her twirling black skirt looking entirely out of place in the colorful garden. 

And yet, she looked singular and opulent in comparison to her surroundings. She was striking, in her own way, and so scintillating to talk to and be with….

Shaking her head to clear her wandering thoughts, Ann realized she was falling behind and rushed to catch up to her new friend. 

Over the following weeks, the two women spent hours discussing watercolors, travels, science, and their favorite games between walks in the garden and quiet conversations on the settee.

“Backgammon is a delight,” Ann remarked one day, to which Anne responded with a sly smile, “Well, you shall have to attempt to thrash me, Ann.”

Oh. 

Every time Anne spoke in such a way, Ann felt an uncomfortable tightness growing in her abdomen, a fluttering that ebbed with her very presence. Unsure, Ann often shied away from such feelings and turned the conversation to more dull topics. 

But somehow, Anne Lister was always able to fascinate her senses. 

That’s how Ann found herself walking through the Shibden estate and discussing travel plans with Anne for the spring. Ann was nervously talking about her “friends” coming to stay, wringing her hands together as they traveled further from Halifax, Shibden, and people. Finally, blissfully alone with Miss Anne Lister. 

She prayed she didn’t ruin it. 

Suddenly, Anne slowed down her pace and looked at Ann with a smile. Looking up from the ground, where her eyes had been trained during her rambling, Ann’s eyes locked onto a charming chaumiere that was hidden away in the small gathering of pine trees. It had a small chimney and charming german window panes and siding that made it appear as though it belonged in a Grimm’s fairytale like _Hansel and Gretel_. Although without the sinister witch or candy adorning the outside. 

It was an escape from the vast estates that held the two women- with their responsibilities and their empty rooms. Their lonely chairs and paintings of relatives long gone. 

Here the two women could never stand more than ten feet away from each other, the house was so small. It would be quite- intimate. Staring at the cottage, Ann felt a rising shyness in her that she attempted to quell. Anne would never push her to do anything she did not want.

_She is not Mr. Ainsworth. She is not,_ Ann repeated to herself, over and over. 

And yet, what did she want from the enigmatic woman beside her? 

As they stepped inside the charming chaumiere, Ann smiled widely as she took in the dark wood, the small fireplace and the wide couch that appeared quite comfortable. It was quite the opposite of Crow’s Nest with its beautiful, uncomfortable furniture and sprawling rooms. This was homey. 

Anne requested that she sit down, a large grin upon her face as she took in Ann’s obvious happiness with the cottage and made her way over to tend to the fire. It was quite domestic. 

“I was so happy,” Ann heard herself blurting out, “when you turned up in Eskdale. I’d been feeling rather low and I-I knew if there was one face in the world I would be delighted to see it was yours.” She finished with a giggle, watching Anne’s expression from where she knelt, tending the fire. She looked quite pleased with Ann’s confession. 

' _Screw your courage to the sticking place,’_ she thought to herself, taking a deep breath.

“You know, before I went up there that day, we were in my sitting room, and you said,” Ann gulped and fought her instincts to lower her eyes, “Um, you implied that you… Wanted to…” She trailed off, feeling heat radiating off of her cheeks and finished with a whisper, “kiss me.”

“And then you were embarrassed but, um, you shouldn’t have been. Because it doesn’t frighten me.” She finished, holding Anne’s gaze and trembling slightly, despite the warmth in the room. It cost her all her daring to speak aloud these wants, but she knew Anne would not push her.

Anne gazed at her for a moment, a disbelieving look in her eyes: “Really?”

Anne grabbed her hand and gazed into her eyes, kneeling up so she was nearer to Ann than before and smiling up at her with a look of relief in her eyes. 

Shaking her head for a moment, she stood up to close the window shades to give them privacy and Ann felt positively ill at the anticipation growing, swelling, igniting within her at Anne’s brief absence. 

Her hands felt clammy and her breath increased rapidly, but she still felt a calm sense of assuredness with Anne.

_She would never hurt me_.

Anne kneeled down gently before her, their eyes meeting evenly and Anne smiled softly, in a way Ann had never witnessed Anne Lister smile before. 

Ann leaned in, a calm beginning to settle over her, when Anne moved her head away from her lips and placed a deft kiss against her neck. She trailed kisses down her neck and under her ear, slowly, _slowly_ , allowing her breath to trail over the imprint of the kisses and causing Ann’s skin to alight with goosebumps. 

As Ann tried to remember how to breathe, Anne lifted her right hand to her lips in a gentlemanly fashion to kiss the back of it.

But then, oh, then she turned it over to place a soft kiss over her palm that was slightly wet, slightly deeper than the others. More lingering. A thrill ran up her arm and she had to stifle a soft sigh. 

Who knew such chaste kisses could be so affecting? Ann felt utterly bewildered, her abdomen aching once again as Anne continued her declaration of intimacy, kissing her wrist and then stroking a hand over her lips and down her neck. 

Ann felt herself reaching a hand up to cradle one side of Anne’s face, a timid smile resting on her lips as she felt the excitement within her grow. She was going to kiss her, Anne Lister was going to truly kiss her, and soon. 

Her eyes kept moving between Anne’s dark brown eyes and her full lips, anticipation growing as the room around the faded away until it was only them, sitting together in this moment, sharing the air between them. 

Both women leaned in together, unable to wait another instant, and gently grazed their noses together for a moment before their lips, one pair dry and one slightly wet, touched together, barely moving at all. 

At first. 

Then Anne’s tongue moved to lightly graze Ann’s lips before they parted slightly. Ann moved in for another adoring caress from Anne’s lips, but the woman herself moved away with a smile, cradling Ann’s face in her hands in a careful manner.

Ann fought her pout at the quick, too quick, intimacy they had shared, and smiled at Anne in return, the fluttering in her stomach increasing as Anne’s eyes gazed at her intently, longingly, happily. 

She felt utterly, completely infatuated with Anne Lister. 

“I-I think it is time we head back to Shibden,” Anne admitted with a rueful chuckle, sitting back on her heels and looking up at Ann.

Ann willed her mouth to say something, say anything, to ask for more kisses, or perhaps a plea to stay a while longer, but all that emerged was a timid “of course.”

Gathering her bonnet in her hand, and worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, Ann wondered if perhaps she was simply poor at kissing. Perhaps that is why Anne wanted them to leave the cottage. Perhaps… Well, perhaps Ann was simply unwanted. 

Wringing her hands together as they made their way back to the path and lost in her anxieties, Ann did not notice Anne staring at her, a look of concern on her handsome face. 

“Ann, are you alright?” Anne asked softly, taking the younger woman’s hands and stopping their walk for a moment. 

“Yes, I just,” biting her lip once again, she continued, “I was worried that perhaps you’d gone off of me,” she admitted in a rush. Her complexion, which had lost its rosy glow from Anne’s attentions, returned with a force as she looked down in embarrassment at her confession.

Anne chuckled fondly, shaking her head, “Ann, I’ve just kissed you. We’ve just shared a beautiful moment together. Why would I have ‘gone off you’?”

Still looking down at their intertwined hands, Ann whispered, “because I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m sure I’m bad at it. Kissing, I mean.”

Anne began moving, encouraging Ann to back up until her back was resting against an old oak tree. She then removed her hands from Ann’s and guided one up to raise Ann’s chin, forcing her to meet Anne’s dark, amused eyes. 

“Well, I don’t think you’re a bad kisser, but we can’t have you walking around with a poor opinion of yourself, now can we?” She continued with a lofty tone, her eyes twinkling as she looked down into Ann’s soft blue irises.

“Well, I-” Ann began, but was cut off by Anne’s mouth descending onto her own, kissing her softly for a moment before nibbling gently on her lower lip and whispering against her swollen mouth,” you really mustn’t bite your lips, darling, it’s a bad habit.”

Before Ann could even formulate a response, Anne’s mouth lowered once more, invoking a pleased sigh from Ann and neither of them spoke for a long while afterwards.

 

* * *

 

 

“I can’t remember when I’ve spent so pleasant a day,” Ann said once they had returnedto Crow’s Nest in the afternoon, taking off her bonnet with a smile and slightly swollen lips. 

Anne smiled in satisfaction at Ann’s glowing appearance from a new simple kisses and felt an aching need to introduce her to more _indelicate_ delights. She was so sweet, and utterly attentive to Anne’s emotions and requests. Truly, she was as obedient and pure as Anne could have wished for in a wife. 

Time to get on with it. 

“I wonder, if tomorrow, you might pay a sort of formal call on my aunt,” she mentioned casually, to which Anne agreed with a slightly bewildered expression. Anne knew she could never take a wife her aunt did not approve of, and so she wanted them to have a formal introduction before Anne continued courting the girl. 

Giving her hat to her manservant James, Ann continued as they walked into the library, “And then, tomorrow evening, would you like to come for dinner and then,"

She closed the door sharply, turning and resting her back against it.

“Stay all night?”

Anne was startled and laughed lightly, looking down for a moment and then back up at the bold request from her usually timid friend. 

“Are-are you sure?” She asked, barely daring to hope, the swell of hope in her chest radiated out of her smile. 

Ann nodded, and that was all the agreement Anne needed to rush into her arms and kiss the pleasant smile right off of her lips. 

Oh, how perfect they could be together. Walking home that night, her lips a tad bit sore, Anne felt a smile tugging at her lips and a skip in her step. 

Even Marian reprimanding her for coming home late, in the dark, without telling or apologizing to her servants- _honestly, Marian, don’t you understand class at all_ \- could faze her from her euphoric mood. 

“I had to send for Dr. Kenny for Aunt Ann!” Marian exclaimed, quite nervous, and Anne bolted up the stairs at once, her giddiness fading at the reality of her aunt’s illness. 

“Are you alright? I was only over at Lightcliffe,” She explained apologetically to her aunt as she strode into the room. Her aunt nodded with a forgiving smile at Anne’s absence. Marian followed her into the room, still cross with her sister.

“Yes, we didn’t know that, did we?” Marian huffed, inserting herself into Aunt Anne’s bedroom to continue reprimanding Anne. 

“Thank you, Marian.”

“You’re impossible,” she declared. 

“Yes.”

“You’re so selfish!”

Anne dismissed it with a sigh, rolling her eyes at her little sister's antics: “Quite possibly, now I need to talk to Aunt Anne.”

“Will you, in the future, think of other’s whilst you’re living here?”

“Whilst I,” Anne started indigently as her sister reprimanded her habits on her own estate. Taking a breath, she responded: “Yes, certainly, thank you.” She quipped, pushing Marian into the hallway and slamming the door in her face with a sense of real satisfaction at her muffled huff through the door. 

“She worries about you, we all do,” her aunt explained.

“As long as you’re alright, that’s all that matters to me,” Anne responded, taking her aunt’s feeble hand into her own and giving it an affectionate kiss. 

When her aunt asked about her whereabouts, Anne responded: “it’s been a rather unusual day, and a happy one.” 

“I was with Miss Walker, we’ve become friends, she confides in me, we talk about all sorts of things, and I think she’s become rather fond of me," she admitted with a quiet grin, "I had begun to wonder, not that anythings been said yet, if she might make a companion for me, for life.”

“Does she seem disinclined to marry?”

“She’s twenty-nine,” Anne dismissed, untying her cravat and settling down beside her aunt. 

“She’s twelve years younger than you, hard to imagine she’s your intellectual equal.” 

“Would that matter? If our tastes were the same and we were fond of one another?” _And our tastes are certainly the same,_ Anne thought wickedly. 

“Was she vulgar?” Anne asked, concerned with her aunt’s reticent attitude about her plan. 

“The aunt was, but not her. Where would you live?”

“We’d live here at Shibden.”

Anne’s aunt seemed surprised at this, “Would she leave Crow’s Nest? It’s very elegant.”

“Shibden could be elegant,” Anne replied, frustrated.

Softening her tone, she continued: “Shibden will be elegant.”

Her aunt continued: “You know I want you to be happy, above all things, but her tribe will have things to say.”

“What would be better for them, hmm, two respectable, landed ladies living together as companions. They wouldn’t have to worry about her. She had two and a half thousand a year. Two of that entirely to her own disposable. Wouldn’t you say that was a prudent match?” Anne replied with a grin, looking at her aunt for her opinion of the match. 

“Yes, of course,” she nodded, pausing before she continued, “if you were a man.”

Seeing her aunt’s pitying expression, Anne turned away, leaning forward on the bed to avoid her gaze as she replied. 

“Nature played a challenging trick on me, didn’t she? Putting a bold spirit like mine in this vessel,” Anne scoffed, gesturing down to her body, “where I’m obliged to wear frills and petticoats, well I will not be cowed by it!” 

She took a deep breath and let it out, closing her eyes for a moment to digest the indignity of it all. 

“People can be very cruel,” her aunt responded, leaning forward. 

Anne rolled her eyes, her tone indignant: “Shame on them.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt. This is Halifax, they don’t mince words,”

Anne turned around, meeting her aunt’s eyes and pleading with her: “Sometimes, if we want to be happy, we have to risk being hurt. They can’t touch me.”

She didn't know who she was trying to convince more, her aunt or herself. 

 

* * *

 

After Marian’s meltdown at the breakfast table- “oh you are sowing the wind hourly, daily, and you will reap the whirlwind!”- and subsequent holiday to her friend’s house, Anne told Ann while they were nestled together at the chaumiere that she could not stay “all night” and leave her aunt with the servants.

No matter how much she might want to.

While leaning in for a kiss, Ann backed away for a moment and whispered, “there is one more thing. I’ve received a letter,” she admitted softly, nervously, “and it’s about you.” 

Intrigued, the two women walked back to Crow’s Nest to confront the letter together, a building anticipation building in Anne's chest as they walked. Ann handed it to her with a expression a bit too close to pity, and Anne snatched it up and opened it. 

Anne read the letter in the library, with its feminine script and limited words, while Ann fretted nearby. She felt a pang in her heart once she had finished. Anne knew she had to rise above it, as she always did, as she always must, but it was a burden to be viewed so hatefully at times. 

It did hurt, not that she would ever admit it. 

“Are you alright?” Ann asked, standing nervously by the window and Anne looked over at her from where she was slumped over the back of an armchair. 

She was a vision in pink and chiffon- a stunning, feminine beauty unlike anything Anne had ever seen. Unlike anything Anne could ever be. 

Burying her saddened expression, Anne replied, “this was written by someone who knows nothing about me. It’s so poisonous. It's so cowardly.”

“I suppose it wasn’t meant for your eyes, Ann concluded, “but I wanted you to see it because I wanted you to know I don’t care what anyone else says about you,” she replied, continuing, “Especially someone who doesn’t even put their name to their work,” She finished with a slight smile, walking towards Anne with a beseeching expression upon her face. 

Anne looked out the windows and, seeing no one present, took the girl into her arms and tilting her head to place a single kiss against her soft lips. 

“I must go,” she replied, stepping away and picking up the note once again, endeavoring to burn it once she returned to Shibden.

Inside the hateful message was inscribed: ’Miss Lister cannot be trusted in the company of women.’ 

_My only crime is to love them,_ Anne thought to herself _, and that is not a crime._

 

* * *

 

Anne was regaling her with another story of her travels at dinner that evening, and Ann was utterly delighted to once again be in the company of her friend. 

She broached the subject of the Ainsworth’s arrival, endeavoring not to flinch over _his_ name, and informed Anne with glee that they may be able to begin their travels earlier than expected. 

Anne looked as if she was holding back a laugh at Ann’s rambling narrative, but Ann didn’t mind her teasing, even if it was slightly patronizing. She was here with her, at Crow’s Nest, drinking wine and planning to stay for “a little while” after dinner. 

And, perhaps, there would be more kissing. 

Suppressing a shiver, Ann finished her dinner and let Anne take the lead in their conversation once more. 

“Have I told you about my time studying astrology in Norway….”

After dinner, James showed them into the drawing room before departing for the night and Ann poured them both tea as the clock ticked softly in the corner of the room. The candles were lighting the room with a dim glow and Anne was vibrating with energy. 

“I wanted to ask,” she began excitedly, “when we come back from the continent, whether-” Anne paused, looking quite nervous. _What could make Anne Lister nervous,_ Ann wondered to herself. 

Anne began to speak: “You see, the thing is, I shall never get married, ever,” she emphasized, “and if you felt like you might never get married, either, and you were prepared to give up all thought of ever having children, I wondered if, on our return, might we might live together,” she blurted out in a rush, looking into Ann’s eyes and grinning widely before continuing, “set up home together, as companions.”

Ann moaned softly, the mere idea of Anne wanted to be with her, all the time, every day, was exhilarating and life affirming. 

Ann asked, to be clear, “It’d be like a marriage.”

Anne’s eyes sparkled in pleasure at the comparison, hope welling in her eyes at Ann’s (almost) acceptance, “quite as good, or better!”

Ann smiled and looked down into her milky tea with too much sugar. Her thoughts swirling in her mind, she asked: “I do wonder thought…. You see, I’ve always been fond of children, and whilst the idea of giving birth is not something I’d want,” she reiterated from their previous conversation, “and whilst I always thought I’d never marry, I did once feel an inclination not to stick to that. So it’s difficult to positively say I might never feel that inclination again.”

Anne’s face, once aglow, dimmed slightly like a oil lamp. “Oh,” was all that Anne replied, and Ann was quick to assuage her fears.

“So could we wait, say six months? Well, it is, is it not, the same as a proposal?” She asked, looking at Anne steadily, “and would it not be prudent for both parties to fully consider?”

Anne took her hands into her own and rested them on her lap. 

“Of course,” she laughed,” of course it would, it is exactly like a proposal. Shall we say April 3rd, it’s my birthday,” Anne divulged with a grin.

“I can wait that long,” Anne admitted, her face growing serious and looking into Ann’s eyes, reaching up to caress her cheek as she finished: “as long as I have reason to hope.”

“Oh, I, I think that you have every reason to hope.” 

Anne leaned forward to place a swift kiss against her cheek and then pulled back with a tender smile on her face. 

Ann loved that Anne took such tender care with her, but she wanted so much more than this, although she didn’t have the courage to ask. So, with a fluttering in her heart, she leaned forward quickly and sealed their lips in a kiss that tasted of tea and sugar. 

Chuckling against her lips, Anne didn’t break the kiss but moved their heads so the angle was much improved for moving and delving and- oh! Much better, Ann thought as she fought down a smile of pleasure. 

As they continued to kiss, Anne pushed Ann gently back on the couch and kissed her wetly, more passionately than any kisses they had shared before, a sense of urgency in her touches. With Ms. Lister’s hand running up and down her evening gown, Ann felt her chest swelling in her corset with the force of her breaths. 

Ann felt quite overcome by Anne’s attentions and allowed the passionate caresses to continue until she felt a delving hand sneaking up her stockings to grip onto her thigh. A rising sense of urgency rose in her, and the pleasant tingling running up and down her spine transforming into one thought: “no.” She felt out of control, utterly helpless, and felt her nerves rising. 

“No, no stop!” Ann gasped, breaking their kiss with a gasp and ducking her head down in fear. 

“What?” Anne asked, confused for a moment and keeping her face her Ann’s. 

“It’s too much, it’s too soon.” Ann explained, feeling utterly miserable as she avoided Anne’s gaze. She’s ruined everything. 

Anne still looked utterly bewildered: “Did I hurt you?”

“It’s not that, it’s too, I’m not-“

“Not what?”

Anne looked as though she was bracing herself before she whispered, “Does it feel wrong?”

“Not the kissing, but this-” Ann trailed off, taking a gulping breath, her mind saying, _‘you can’t tell her about him. What he did. Don’t tell her.’_

Aloud she said, “I don’t know. Sorry.”

Anne sighed, leaning back even further to place some distance between them: “No, I’m sorry.”

She was leaning away, avoiding her and moving away from Ann. Oh no, she’s ruined everything. With that torturous thought swirling around her mind, she verbalized, “Have I spoiled everything?”

“No, no of course not,” Anne assured, pushing her hair back and setting her vest back to rights, a tentative smile on her lips. 

“I’ve not done this before,” _technically, with a woman, with someone I-_ “I’m probably not very good at this. I’ll probably disappoint you.”

“You haven’t,” Anne stroked her cheek, looking into her eyes and Ann felt her heart flutter, “you haven’t, Ann.” She sounded so firm, so knowing, that Ann began to relax back into her arms and-

The doorbell rang in the distance, and the two women sighed in frustration. It was Miss Lister’s manservant, John. 

“Have you done this before?” Ann asked, curiosity eating away at her as she wondered at Miss Lister’s very assured romantic abilities.

She must have kissed many women. She must have. 

“No,” Anne scoffed in denial, looking up for a moment before grasping Ann’s head and placing a firm kiss against her forehead, “of course not.”

Kissing her forehead once more, in her typical vigorous-affectionate manner, Anne stood up and strode to the door, looking back one more time to smile weakly at Ann before she walked away, closing the door behind her.

In the silence she left in her wake, Ann had never felt so utterly alone.

 

* * *

 

The next day, after her run in with the drunken, belligerent Sowden, Anne made her way over to Crow’s Nest, brooding all the while and cutting down ferns in her path with her walking stick. 

_I am not a man,_ she thought viciously to herself, taking another swing at the offensive plants in her way, _I may not be feminine or fit into the norm, but I am an enigma to myself. I am unknown even to myself, but isn’t it exciting to be different!_

Shaking her head to clear them of these thoughts, she trooped up the stairs of Crow’s Nest, practically throwing her coat at James and, without waiting to be announced, strode into the drawing room where the two women had shared heated kisses the night before. Sweet, tender kisses unlike anything Anne had known before. Her affairs were always like a gas-fire: hot, fiery, passionate, and short. Too quick to burn out. But with Ann everything was slow, building, wonderfully new. 

Before Ann’s nerves overtook her and she called for Anne to stop. 

Perhaps she was overstepping the mark, just a tad, and should back off a bit. The last thing she hoped to achieve was adding to the girl’s unhappiness. She had borne far too much of that already as an orphan with a distant sister and nosy relations. 

Anne flung open the door and paced in, looking around for the nervous Miss Walker, but Ann was nowhere to be seen. Where could the girl be? 

She heard a small sniffling sound and, looking down, saw Ann curled up on the floor, looking up at her in absolute misery. 

Her expression fell as Anne took in the state of her usually jovial friend, “Ann?’

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she choked out, gasping between breaths, her face wet with tears and her hands grasping at her dress like a child being scolded.

“What’s happened?” Anne asked, looking around to find the unknown source of Ann’s miserable state. 

“Nothing, it’s just, after last night I didn’t think you’d come back,” she admitted, still wringing her hands in her lavender dress and looking utterly lost, sitting on the floor of the vast drawing room with its ornate wallpaper and beautiful oil paintings. 

Anne sighed in understanding and closed the door to give the two women privacy before rushing over to Ann, kneeling down and grasping for her hands as she did so, saying, “you’ll find me a lot more constant than that.” 

Ann wouldn’t meet her eyes as they welled up with tears once again that ran down her pallid cheeks, “I don’t deserve you.” Ann sniffed again and shook her head in utter dejection, “I’m not good enough for you.”

Anne was utterly bewildered at the transformation of the woman she had known just the night before, who was aglow at her proposal and her kisses before she suddenly froze and had gone off her. 

Ann was continuing her self flagellation: “You’re so clever and interesting, you’ll soon get fed up with me.” 

Anne shook her head, clutching Ann’s soft hands in her own ever tighter: “Ann, you’ve got to stop having such a poor opinion of yourself.” Reaching up, Anne thumbed a tear away from under Ann’s eye and cradled her cheek, “hmm?”

The then reached down to grasp her chin, pushing it up to force those watery blue eyes to meet her own, “You’re clever, and you’re interesting,” Anne said and was slightly startled to realize they were not just platitudes to calm Ann down, but rather that she meant them.

Ann took a gasping breath and asked, in a shaking voice, “do you still want us to live together?” 

Oh this unbearable girl, this charming woman, how can she even ask? 

Anne uttered this thought aloud, without the ridiculous praises of her overly sentimental mind, and Ann shrugged, adding, “I was so terrified I would never see you again.” 

Anne pulled her hand away for a moment, “Why?” 

“Because of… last night! Because I couldn’t give you what you wanted.” Ann looked up briefly into Anne’s eyes but then looked down in shame, more tears spilling from her eyes and running down her face. 

Anne looked down, sighing and bracing herself for the conversation ahead. Who had given Ann the idea that denying romantic intimacy, for any reason, made her unlovable in the least? If anything, it made her more pure, more worthy of being Anne’s wife. This called for more intimacy, more tenderness, not less. 

Anne sat down beside her and stroked Ann’s smaller hands with her own, meeting her eyes and saying softly, “these things take time.” 

Ann nodded, unable to formulate a verbal response while still weeping softly. 

Anne tutted and gently, so gently, kissed her forehead. She felt Ann utterly submit to her attentions in that moment and decided the poor girl just needed some care. 

Stroking her cheeks, she hummed and kissed her forehead again. Looking down and kissing her cheek, Anne listened to Ann’s weeping trail off completely until she moaned softly when Anne kissed her neck.

She was particularly sensitive to small, wet kisses right below her ear, Anne had discovered. 

Reigning in her baser instincts for the moment, Anne continued to lavish Ann’s face with aching slow kisses, her eyelashes fluttering against Ann’s unbelievably soft skin until she finally, finally sealed their lips in a proper kiss. 

Anne felt relief when Ann immediately kissed back, their lips parting and joining in a natural dance between lovers, the taste of salt not deterring either of them in the least.

 

* * *

 

Anne soon had her lying on her back on the couch in that same drawing room, just like the night before, kissing her deeply and fulfilling a want that Ann was unable to ask for quite yet, due to her innate shyness. 

But oh, the sounds and gasps escaping from her lips could not be quelled as Miss Lister took and took and _took_. Their kisses grew deeper, Anne teaching Ann how to use her tongue through example, tracing over her lower lip until goosebumps rose on her arms and down her flushed chest before moving down to place small pecks just below her ear. 

Ann felt her toes curling in her satin slippers as Miss Lister placed a strong thigh between her legs. Even through her day-dress and petticoats, she could feel the hard length settling where she was aching the most. Why was she aching, why was she so overheated? It didn’t hurt, not like before, rather it felt like it was building, increasing… What was happening to her? 

“Oh Anne,” she gasped, and felt Miss Lister smile into her neck where she was busy kissing her, tracing the places where she had kissed with her tongue while beginning to rock her leg and _-ah!_ She was pleased with herself, but Ann didn’t care as long as she kept kissing her and moving her powerful appendage just there.

Suddenly she stopped rutting and removed her thigh from between Ann’s legs, and before Ann could whine out in protest, Anne moved a hand up her stockings and drawers, as she did last night, looking into Ann’s eyes for her agreement. 

She nodded and whispered, “yes.” Anne’s hand trailed from her outer thigh to the slit at the top of her drawers, and before she could feel and ounce of embarrassment, Anne’s deft fingers were stroking through her blonde curls and gently gathering the wetness that had gathered between her center to rub circles over a specially sensitive area at the top, an area that Ann had never felt before. 

“Oh!” She moaned, her hips thrusting into Anne’s hand in a search for more of that feeling as Anne rubbed punishingly slow circles around that small bump with her rough thumb, causing shivers of heat to flow down Ann’s spine. 

“I love you,” she whispered and Anne’s brown eyes met her own in shock-

And that was when Mrs. Priestly barged into the drawing room, unannounced. 

She completely shattered the heat of the moment between the two women and shouted accusations about the two of them kissing and causing a scandal. She and Miss Lister stood there and took their scolding, Anne trying to deny it, Ann simply looking at her shoes and fixing her dress and discreetly as possible. 

As soon as Mrs. Priestly had left, her words rang in Ann’s ears.

_“You’re playing with fire! Both of you!”_

Hmm, perhaps. Perhaps it was dangerous, it was certainly against her family’s expectations. But with Anne, the fire only ever felt satisfying, cleansing, healing. 

As soon as the door shut and left them in heavy silence, Ann felt it bubbling up within her, and it would not be quelled. Laughter was spilling out of her lips; uncontrollable, quaking giggles that rang about the room and she was positively heaving with it. It was ridiculous, it was scandalous, it was…

It was the adventure she had been searching for. 

Anne was looking at her as if she was certifiably insane, and perhaps she was, but once she suggested the two women go upstairs to her bedroom to continue their activities, Anne didn’t even blink an eye.

The dignified, older woman darted out of the room to follow her up the stairs, the two women giggling like schoolgirls who had stolen some candy from the kitchens. 

All in all, it was wonderfully fun.

 

* * *

Anne looked at the beauty who was resting her back against the bedroom door, the girl who had just laughed in the face of scandal and asked Anne for more, and Anne found herself utterly humbled by the mere sight of her. 

Ann Walker continued to surprise and delight her. 

Striding forward, she placed a punishing kiss on those (already pleasantly swollen) pink lips, cradling the back of her head and tilting it back to allow Anne to dominate the encounter. 

Anne pulled her away from the door, watching her face carefully for any signs of hesitation and, seeing none, gestured wordlessly for her to get onto the bed. 

The little minx laid right down, and Anne bounded up right beside her, leaning over her for an instant and grabbing a pillow for her neck. Gazing down at her, Anne couldn’t help but smile at Ann. She sparkled in the sunlight, her curls radiant in the afternoon rays that streaked through the windows. 

Anne quickly, hurriedly untied her cravat and prepared herself for her next task in procuring a wife- seduction. 

The most pleasant task of all, if Anne was being entirely honest. 

Flipping up Ann’s many, many layers of petticoats, her dress and her shift, Anne placed kisses along her stocking covered legs. First her ankle, then her calf, and finally a small peck along her inner thigh to tease. 

Ann gasped, toes curling in her shoes once more as the heated embrace from earlier was rekindled in her bedroom. The ache in her abdomen that she often experienced when kissing Miss Lister was growing, pulsing within her at her center, a place she had never dared to even touch outside of the cursory wash. 

But Miss Lister had dared. 

Ann gasped as Anne kissed her, her hands grappling at the soft duvet beneath her as she closed her eyes with a smile of contentment. Anne then kissed up her dress, over her breast for a moment before settling just above her lips. 

As they gasped into each other’s mouths, Anne teasingly kept her lips away for a moment, encouraging Miss Walker to engage in the chase. Ann sealed their lips together after a moment, and Anne felt a soaring in her chest at the feeling of Ann’s eagerness to please, her obedience to Anne’s unspoken will. 

Then Anne’s questing fingers, which had been briefly unoccupied, fond those sodden curls and pink center once more and began her caresses her new lover, keeping her face level with Ann’s own to watch her gasp, her eyelid’s flutter, and her flush deepen as Anne gave her pleasure. 

_My, my, Miss Walker, you’re not dull and insipid after all._

It was a heady feeling, to give a woman pleasure that men so rarely were able to achieve, and Anne felt drunk with it, smiling as she gazed down at her innocent Miss Walker who had most likely never achieved le petit mort. She would achieve it today, if Anne had her way. 

Ann’s legs fell open and her hips began to cant up, up, up into Anne’s fingers. Slowly, as not to shock, Anne slowly pushed her middle finger against Miss Walker’s entrance and, seeing nothing but continued pleasure on her face, she pushed inside and rubbed the palm of her hand against Ann’s swollen clitoris.

“Oh, ah, Anne!” She cried, her movements briefly stalling until she began moving with a renewed vigor, searching for a sensation she did not yet understand. Anne continued gently stroking her inside, just a simple in an out motion with continued pressure against her swollen bud, until she felt Ann’s inner walls begin to spasm around her middle finger. 

With a smirk, Anne leaned down to capture Ann’s quaking moan with her lips in a kiss, whispering _hush_ as Ann experienced her first crisis. 

Her first of many, one would hope. 

Afterwards, Anne laid down beside Ann and tangled their fingers together, watching the flush of newfound pleasure glow from Miss Walker’s beautiful features. Anne felt unaccountably and unequivocally happy, despite the throbbing between her legs. 

Later, she promised herself, and turned her attentions to Ann.

“What-what was that feeling, Miss Lister?” Ann asked with a blissful smile on her face. 

Anne raised her eyes at the formal term of address in a distinctly informal time and said, “what feeling, Ann?”

She knew exactly what the girl was referring to, of course, but she could never resist some good natured teasing. And Ann’s blush was truly a sight to behold. 

“The, the feeling of,” she trailed off for a moment, her voice dropping to a whisper, “the feeling of release, of relief, of exploding… Oh, you’re teasing me!” Ann accused with a laugh, her fingers pinching Miss Lister’s thumb for a moment in retribution before stroking them once again.

“Yes, my dear, I know what you were referring to. It is called le petit mort, or the little death in French. It is believed that when you achieve your, ah, release,” Anne explained, as delicately as she could, “your heart pauses for a moment and you die from…. Well, from pleasure.” Anne finished, looking into Ann’s curious eyes and smiling reassuringly, “you don’t actually die, of course, people achieve release, or climax, often.”

Without missing a beat, Ann asked, “do you?”

Raising her eyebrows at Ann, she watched as the girl realized her impertinent question and looked away with a blush, pulling her hand away in embarrassment. With a put-upon sigh, Anne grabbed her wrist and placed a soft kiss inside before responding, “yes, Ann I, a 41 year old woman, have had two or three-” _or a thousand_ “-moments of release in my lifetime.” 

Ann looked slightly shocked at this, and accusation entered her eyes: “I thought you said you’d never done this before!” Her serious expression did not hold however, and she was giggling slightly by the end. 

Anne joined in, flipping herself so she was straddling Anne’s hips before she leaned down to whisper over her lips: “well Ann, darling, I lied.” She punctuated with a kiss to ease any ill will at her admission, and then looked into Ann’s eyes.

Ann merely looked validated: “I knew you had done this before!” 

Anne rolled her eyes and ran her hands up and down Ann’s sides, relishing the squirming girl beneath her who was trying (and failing) to escape her ticklish touches, “well, Ann, what shall we do now?” She whispered, her lips dangling just above the younger woman’s. 

“I- that is,” Ann stammered, “could you show me?”

“Show you what?” Anne asked, confused as to what Ann was referring to.

Ann cleared her throat, her mind slightly foggy at Anne’s close proximity, and asked, “can we, both of us, have more….” she whispered so lowly that Anne was unable to hear her.

“What?”

Another mumble as Ann stared at her chin, avoiding her eyes. 

“Ann, you must speak up,” She instructed. 

Ann huffed and squeaked out, “le petit mort! Can we have more releases?”

Anne smirked and leaned down for another kiss, biting down gently on Ann’s lower lip and responded, “of course, Miss Walker. It would be my pleasure.” 

 

 


	5. Most women are dull and stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter mentions Ann's sexual assault. Trigger warning for the following chapter.

_“Friday 22 June 1821 [Halifax]_

_I owe a good deal to this journal. By unburdening my mind on paper I feel, as it were, in some degree to get rid of it; it seems made over to a friend that hears it patiently, keeps it faithfully, and by never forgetting anything, is always ready to compare the past & present and thus to cheer & edify the future.” _

 

Over breakfast, Mrs. Priestly was in an irritable mood, pouring cream into her tea and glaring across the table at her husband.

“I have defended that woman ever since she was in her teens,” she huffed out, leaning forward in her chair and biting out the words, “Ever since she began staying with her aunt and uncle at Shibden Hall- I have defended her against the vilest insults and innuendo because I never once thought any of it was true, and because I was fond of her.”

Mrs. Priestly shook her head sadly, “And of course now I realize, only too vividly, what a laughingstock I’ve been! I told them, as I was leaving, that they were ‘playing with fire’ and your cousin laughed!” 

Mr. Priestly rung his hands together at the other end of the table, trying to stem the damage and prevent his foolish wife from gossiping about the far too clever Anne Lister and her proclivities with young Ann. 

But it was too late. 

Later in the day, the couple paid a call on Miss Walker’s aunt who informed them that Anne Lister had taken their young cousin up to York to see a Doctor Belcombe about her “nerves.”

The discussion was laced with innuendo about Miss Lister’s intentions by Mrs. Priestly, who stated: “It’s an excuse to get her away from her family, on her own!”

Mr. Priestly attempted to hush his talkative wife with a nervous hushing motion, a grimace on his face at the furthering of the vile chatter. Ann’s aunt simply held a hand up and replied, “the unspoken, William, is not always the unknown. She will have her in Paris before we know it!” 

Uneasy looks based around the drawing room at the remark, and they finished their tea sandwiches in silence.

 

* * *

 

In York, Ann’s nerves were feeling quite alight, in the best way, as Miss Lister had her sprawled wantonly on her back, legs spread, and her neck bared for more incessant kisses. 

With a sigh, Ann raised her hands and allowed Anne to kiss down her shift to place a wet kiss over her breast. With unflappable accuracy, Anne quickly found her hardened nipple through the fabric and began pressing kisses just there to make Ann moan. 

The two women had spent the entirety of last night in each other’s arms, exploring newfound pleasures with the privacy they enjoyed at the suite of rooms they had acquired in York. And now, in the soft light of the morning, Ann found herself once more being seduced by Anne, despite their limited timeframe before her appointment.

Ann found her mind could not wander to her quickly approaching doctor’s visit as Anne’s questing fingers found their way to her apex once more, teasing up and down her lower lips lightly, just enough to reawaken her arousal once more and spread the wetness left over from the night before when Anne had stroked her, unceasingly, to completion. 

Was it possible to die of pleasure? 

Ann threw her head backwards as Anne used the wetness from her center to slip inside and, hearing Ann’s pleased gasp, began to thrust two fingers in and out of her and a rapidly building rate. 

“Ah, ah, Anne!” Ann sighed and she held onto the pillow resting beneath her neck with both hands, glancing down with a blush to see Anne watching her face with an adoring look in her eyes, all while she preformed the dirtiest, loveliest act Ann had ever witnessed. Her fingers were disappearing inside of her, Ann could see it for Anne had lifted her shift to rest just below her bosom, and Ann felt more wetness gathering at the display and traveling down her thighs. 

She looked away; the sensations feeling utterly amazing but watching Anne delve inside of her, hearing the wetness her hand made when met with her core was causing her to blush with embarrassment. Still, she rocked her hips into Anne’s hands and moaned softly as she took her pleasure. Anne pressed a forearm to her boney hips to keep her from bucking up too far, and Ann succumbed to Miss Lister’s attentions. 

Soon thereafter, Ann could feel the pleasure building rapidly in her lower abdomen, her inner walls clenching around Anne’s fingers as she approached the moment of complete and utter bliss. Just as she felt herself gasping out, about to reach the moment she was craving, Anne stopped. 

She just stopped! 

In the crux of her release, and subsequent denial, Ann let out a pitiful whine and looked down to meet the eyes of her lover, her eyes watering slightly in frustration. 

“Anne,” she gasped, her mouth twisting, “w-why did you stop?”

Anne simply looked at her, keeping her fingers inside of her and observed her steadily. She felt so deliciously full, she could barely concentrate on Anne’s next words, “did you want something, my dear? You have to ask for it.”

 

* * *

 

 

From her perspective, Anne had never seen such a lovely view. Her fingers were buried deep within her gasping lover, her velvety walls clenching and urging Anne to fuck her again. Ann’s womanhood was pleasing and pink, almost perpetually wet before Anne ever touched her and utterly gorgeous. The full outer lips hid the (often aroused) center within and Ann had to spread her legs quite widely to be on full display. 

The poor creature was whimpering and accusing and utterly exquisite while being denied her pleasure. Her milky thighs were shaking with the effort of holding herself open as Anne held her fingers still within her, and Anne placed a kiss against her bare leg in consolation. Ann squirmed down and tried to fuck herself on Anne’s digits, and Anne felt a delighted shiver running up her spine at the wanton action and tightened her arm that was resting over Ann’s diminutive hips. She would have to be sure to repeat the process of extending pleasure on a regular basis. 

After all, denial made the final release so satisfying, Anne wouldn’t deny her young lover that experience. 

Anne loved the thrill of the game so, as calmly as if she was asking for more tea, she asked, “did you want something, my dear?”

Ann whined, a high, desperate sound that drew forth from her mouth as her head thrashed back and forth against the lush pillow. She was disarmingly beautiful, her curls tangled around her like a golden crown, and Anne was nearly distracted into giving her what she wanted without any further question. 

Nearly. 

But then her young lover did something Anne would have never foreseen this early in their passion play. She unclenched her right hand from where it was grasping at the feather pillow and, quick as lightning, darted it between her own thighs to rub at her swollen bundle of nerves. It seems Anne’s lesson on mastrubation to Miss Walker had been informative indeed. 

After blinking away her initial shock, Anne grasped Ann’s hand and held it down against the bed, meeting her slightly disoriented sea colored eyes and saying lowly, “behave yourself, Ann. No touching.”

With an insincere grin, Anne moved her arm from its holding position to pat her thigh before repeating, “Now, just as I asked, did you want something?” Ann nodded, biting her lip in her customary fashion, and Anne smirked at her, “I need to hear you say it.” 

Ann’s bosom was heaving, the pink flush of unfurling arousal had spread down her chest and the shift was quite see through- Anne’s view of her perfect breasts was quite something in the morning light. 

Anne looked at her expectantly and Ann, shy Ann, whispered, “please Anne, please keep… making love to me.”

Anne felt herself momentarily struck numb by the words ‘make love.’ 

Shaking her head to clear it of romantic folderol that had come over her, Anne smiled widely at Ann’s admission and responded, “of course, dear Ann.” 

Leaning up, Anne captured her young lover’s lips in a kiss as she continued moving her fingers where they were buried inside of her, sneaking her thumb up to rub lightly over her swollen bundle of nerves at the same pace. Back and forth, in an out. 

It was slower than Anne intended, and filled with ore reassuring touches, but it was still fucking. It was just that she was with her young and sensitive Ann; she needed gentleness. Anne swallowed every gasp and whimper that Ann admitted, dangling her lips just above and quelling a smile each time Ann leaned up to capture her lips in a kiss. 

Anne relished Ann’s every pleasure as her own, memorizing the feel and taste of her for later, when she was alone and able to pleasure herself to the memory. 

Quite quickly, Ann gasped and began to shudder in her arms, Anne continuing to hush her loud cries with tender kisses as she stroked Ann through her orgasm. 

She watched as Ann’s golden head fell back onto the pillow with a small moan and her body relaxed entirely- Anne kissed up her body once more to place a gentle kiss on her neck before retreating to her side of the bed, looking over at Ann from her own pillow with a full smile. 

She felt utterly content. 

After taking a moment to bask in the afterglow of her achievement, she leaned over to check her pocket watch for the time. 

“Uh-oh. Dr. Belcombe will be here in 20 minutes,” Anne said, reality setting in. They had so much to do today, but they had spent the morning lazing about, now the two of them would have to quickly summon the servants to-

But before her mind could reel even further, a small hand was grabbing her pocket watch out of her hands. Unable to be too cross, Anne reached up to grab the stolen watch from her young friend, who was clutching it with an impish grin on her face. 

“Oh,” Ann giggled as they tussled in bed, fighting over the pocket watch and playfully shoving each other’s hands out of the way.

“Oh, Ann, no” Anne chuckled, amused at her lover’s annoyance with her timepiece, until Ann tackled Anne back onto the bed, the two of them pressed tightly together once more. Anne was unused to anyone being above her, but she enjoyed the delightful weight of Ann pressing against her, as slight as she was, with the mostly-sheer nightgowns separating their heaving bodies. 

Glancing up at her timid lover, Anne wondered if she lacked the courage to initiate any further intimacy.

Apparently not, as Anne found herself being enthusiastically kissed and pressed back into the bed by an affectionate and ardent Ann Walker. She gave as good as she got, of course, and the giggles swiftly turned into a moans from both parties. 

Hmm. Perhaps they could kiss for a few minutes more.

 

* * *

 

Everything had been so lovely in York- Dr. Belcombe had assured her that her travels with Miss Lister would help her nervous hysteria and he also gave her a topical cream he had prescribed, “to be massaged into the back whenever possible,” with a twinkle in his eye and a glance at Miss Lister, who smiled warmly and nodded and response. 

Ann felt her cheeks warm at this and looked down, bashful at their relationship being so evident to the doctor, but Anne had assured her that Steph was the brother of an ‘old friend’ named Mariana and that he was to be trusted. All the while, Ann had been utterly at ease in the doctor’s company and they had a lovely sojourn in York before returning to Halifax. 

When visiting with her aunt, she felt giddy as she relayed the doctor’s report and their plans to travel, the two women speaking over each other as they told Aunt Ann how much better Ann herself felt. 

“You seem to have my niece quite under your spell, Miss Lister,” her aunt challenged, looking at Anne over her teacup with a furrowed brow.

Anne, ever cool under pressure, glibly responded, “Oh? I rather think she has me under hers.” Ann bit her lip to hide a laugh at the Anne-ness of the response and then looked towards her aunt, gleeful once more at her improving health and Anne’s company. 

And then her aunt informed her of Mrs. Ainsworth’s death. 

“Thrown from a carriage.” Ann felt faint as her Aunt Ann relayed the news, and her nervousness was back with a vengeance, leaving her weak and exhausted. Anne made their excuses and bundled her into the carriage to go back home, but she felt utterly nub. 

She felt saddened by the lost look in Anne’s eyes at her sudden feebleness, but she felt too lost to summon any energy to calm her dear friend down. 

_He_ was going to come, alone, to her house. 

And death, all consuming death had surrounded her for her entire life. She even cried when her father died, even though he had always been dismissive and cold towards her. And then her mother, and her brother- it seemed like everyone who had ever truly known her was decaying in the cold earth. 

Anne stayed with her that night, offering her tea, but she just shook her head in refusal. Anne sat down with a sigh in the chair opposite her, reaching forward to stroke over Ann’s dress as she searched for something to say. 

“Do you want to talk about her? Mrs. Ainsworth?”

Ann gazed back at Anne, her eyes red-rimmed from crying and replied, “She was…kind.”

_She was, and I betrayed her by allowing her husband to_ \- Ann shook the blackening thoughts away, looking away from Anne for a moment and staring into the fireplace.

“You must have been very close to her,” Anne remarked, and Ann felt the need to defend her relationship to Anne.

“Why do you say that?”

Anne pulled her hand away and sat back, defensive, “because you’re so upset.”

“Not close like we are, if that’s what you think,” Ann uttered, her thoughts swirling ever darker as the night wore on.

“It’s death,” she finally admitted, staring at Anne with a clouded over expression, “it’s anything to do with death… Terrifies me.” 

Anne stood up, placing down her teacup and, grabbing her hands in her own, led Ann up to bed. She helped her undress and placed her into bed, smoothing the duvet around her before placing a chaste kiss on her forehead. 

Anne then undressed herself in her usual methodical way before sliding into bed beside Ann where she lay, staring up at the ceiling.

“Thank you for staying,” she heard herself whisper into the darkness. 

“Of course,” Anne replied, unclenching Ann’s hand from where it was tightening the bedsheets and placing a kiss in the back and then the palm before settling down to sleep.

Ann felt herself take a deep breath for the first time since the two women left her aunt’s house. She fell into a restless sleep with Anne beside her.

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, after the frightfully awkward house call with Mr. and Mrs. Priestly, Anne made her way back to Shibden. She had been gone for four days and she was anxious to get back to the matter of the Rawson brothers and the coal. 

All the while, niggling thoughts kept resurfacing about Ann’s mental state, but she pushed them away. Really, Ann was supposed to be a convenient, rich choice as a companion, but she was proving to be more trouble than advantageous. 

Still, when Anne thought back to the night before she felt her heart tighten in remembrance of how Ann had curled into her body while asleep, seeking solace from her unconscious fears in the night. She was disarming. 

Ann needed her, and Anne needed her inheritance. A fair trade, she reminded herself as she went about her business around the estate. 

Walking into Halifax, Marian struggled to keep up with her usual rigorous pace as the two sisters journeyed into the city.

“I’m sorry,” Marian blurted after ten minutes of stifling silence between the two women. She continued in a hurry, “that we argued, before I went away. I said things I regret, and I apologize.”

Anne’s lips tightened at the apology that, deep down, wanted to bubble up. Instead, she maintained her cool stride and responded: “I don’t like it when we argue any more than you do.” She refused to even glance at her sister. 

“No I know that, and I apologize.” Did Marian always have to be so- so-

“I know you think it doesn’t affect me, but it does,” Anne admitted, accusation seeping into her tone, “It upsets my equilibrium.”

“It upsets mine too, and I’m sorry,” Marian finished, finally close enough to meet Anne’s eye line and look beseechingly at her sister. 

Anne continued walking, and when her sister asked if she could make her new drawers, Anne recognized it as the peace offering it was an accepted. 

“You’ve become great friends, you and Miss Walker.” Marian stated with a small smile, and Anne felt her expression softening at the thought of Ann. 

“Hmm,” Anne responded, pausing for a moment to look at her sister before continuing, “If she were to move in with me at Shibden as my companion, how would you feel about that?”

Even as she told herself it didn’t matter, Marian was a simpleton for a little sister and her opinions rarely amounted to anything of real value, Anne found herself anxious for her sister’s reply, glancing over to watch her expression.

“Would she leave Crow Nest?” She asked, curious. 

Anne sighed, it was like talking to Aunt Anne all over again: “She says so. She rattles around in it on her own.” 

To her surprise, Marian looked enthusiastic at the prospect, a smile spreading across her plain features: “Oh, I’d be delighted.” 

Anne slowed her pace, turning towards her sister in astonishment to ask, “would you?”

“Of course, I like her, what little I’ve seen of her, and” Marian paused for a moment before continuing, “I’d be pleased for you, to be more settled.”

Anne stopped walking for a moment, stunned and gazing at her sister. Marian, for all the teasing Anne rained down on her, wasn’t obtuse to her sister’s unconformity. She knew the nature of her relationship with Miss Walker, as far as she could guess, and she welcomed it. She wanted Anne to be happy and settled. 

Anne felt a warmth in her chest at her sister’s acceptance of her, of her unconventional life that would undoubtably bring gossip to Shibden. Although she would never admit it, _ever_ , she was touched. 

She looked down for a moment, unusually shy in the face of such kindness, and said, “thank you, Marian.”

_I’ll endeavor to be kinder to you in the future._

Anne continued walking, but Marian stayed behind saying, “There was one thing. I did say before I left which may have overstepped the mark but, at the same time, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.” 

Anne stopped at stared at her sister in confusion at the turn of conversation.

“I believe Aunt Anne has mentioned Mr. Abbot to you,” Marian finished, an expression of hope on her face, but Anne simply turned around and continued walking, ignoring Marian’s pleas. 

Not this matter again: “His name did escape her lips, yes.”

“I’d like to invite him to tea, Father says I can,” She continued with a smile. 

“Well then,” Anne remarked, weary of this already, “do you need my permission?”

Marian’s face pinched slightly at that, “it was more your blessing and… an undertaking that you’d be civil to him.” 

_Be kind_ , Anne reminded herself before replying: “You’ll find me to obstacle to your happiness to something you have very much at heart, Marian, as long as it’s an intelligent choice,” she paused before continuing, “but one would only be doing one’s duty as an elder sister to question to pedigree of a man who makes rugs.” 

Marian rolled her eyes but Anne had already turned away, marching down the hill into town and ignoring the huff of her annoyed younger sister.

 

* * *

 

Ann lifted her head from where it was laying on her knees when Anne burst into her library at 11am the following morning. 

“What’s the matter?” She asked, closing the door with her usual rapid movements and making her way over to where Ann was curled up, “I came as quickly as I could.” 

As Anne kissed her on the cheek, Ann braced herself for the unpleasant conversation ahead, “I-I’ve have a letter from…”

_Say his name Ann, say it, say his name,_ “Mr. Ainsworth. An account of Mrs. Ainsworth’s last day. An account of the accident…. I think he wants to marry me.”

Ann looked down to where Anne was perched at her feet, the admission leaving her palms sweating in nervousness and her throat closing, “and I think he wants to propose to me.”

Anne sat up beside her, her gaze down and face unreadable, as elusive as she always appeared to Ann.

“Can I see it?” Anne asked abruptly.

“What?”

“The letter.” 

“Oh, no,” Ann remarked, looking back out the window to avoid Anne’s gaze. _She would know, she would find out if she read it. She would never come back._

Anne sighed and looked down, clenching and unclenching her hands rhythmically as she processed Ann’s uncommon refusal. 

“What do you mean you think he wants to marry you?”

“The intention’s clear.”

They continued to bicker over the letter, all the while Ann’s mind was swirling deeper into her predictive thoughts of her life- she would be his wife, he would use her as shamelessly as he had done before and she would have to bear it alone. 

Anne suddenly sprung up, her voice echoing off of the mahogany walls of the library: “An offer of marriage- it’s not something to be sniffed at or treated lightly, and a curate to, a man of God, what more could any woman want?”

She raged, pacing about the room like an uncaged wild animal, her face expressive in her distain of this proposed marriage. Even then, Ann heard the underlying anxiety in Ann’s voice and felt even worse for confiding in her.

“You’re cross.”

Anne flippantly replied, “oh, am I?”

Ann looked up at her, “I don’t want to marry him! I want to be with you.” 

Anne touched her forehead, a nervous tick of hers, and scoffed: “well then!”

Ann fumbled with her response for a moment before looking away, defeated, and Anne scoffed and began pacing once more before reigning in her emotions to reply, “No, an offer of marriage isn’t something to be sneezed at. An obviously-” she continued, sitting down in an armchair, her profile to Ann, “it needs some consideration. A clergyman’s wife; and who knows?”

Anne rung her hands together, her voice picking up speed as she continued: “A mother in the fullness of time, and then perhaps a grandmother and then you really would have fulfilled your destiny on this planet as a woman-” her voice broke off, and she sounded tearful and as defeated as Ann herself felt. 

Ann listened to Anne unfurl the story her potential life, but she felt nothing but revulsion at the prospect of that being her destiny, especially with Mr. Ainsworth. And watching Anne Lister’s unflappable countenance waver was not something Ann had ever seen, and she felt enmity towards herself for having caused it. 

She quickly stood and made her way over to Anne, kneeling before her and grasping her arms, “I-I’ve been so in love with you,” she admitted for the second time, meeting Anne’s brown eyes and watching them soften as they stared back, “I always have been.”

Feeling her own tears gathering once again, Ann sniffled before continuing, “ever since the first time I saw you when I was 18- younger! I think the first time I ever saw you I was 14, and I knew then- I just - I knew, and…” She took a staggering breath while Anne wiped the tears from her cheeks and lowered her forehead so theirs were almost touching, the confession becoming sacred in the air between them.

“It’s just utterly clear to me now. So often, whenever I’ve thought of it, I’ve just felt a repugnance towards forming any sort of connection with a man, but I…” she began to sob, unable to continue and leaning forward into Anne’s embrace. 

Anne soothed the back of her neck with her hands, playing with the loose curls that rested there for a moment, the two women lost in their melancholy thoughts. 

Later that night, huddled in bed and with her back turned away, Ann admitted that Mrs. Ainsworth was much older than Mr. Ainsworth, how she had always joked that “Annie” would have to care for him once she had gone. 

“Why won’t you let me see the letter?” Anne pressed, and Ann felt herself curl deeper under the covers. 

“I told you, it’s marked private.” _And you would hate me forever, if you knew._

The distance between them seemed unreachable in the small bed; they both stayed on their own sides, neither one budging to offer comfort to the other. The silence in the room was deafening, as Anne never responded. 

Ann stared at the wallpaper in the darkness for hours before she fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

Anne woke early the next morning after a fitful night’s sleep to find Ann’s small arm wrapped around her torso. She must have moved nearer to Anne in her sleep, as she was pressed against her side. She mumbled something softly into Anne’s nightclothes, tightening her grip for a moment around her waist before loosening again, and Anne closed her eyes and tried to fight off the fluttering in her chest at the charming, unconscious action. 

As quickly and gently as she could, Anne shuffled out from beneath Anne’s arm and, once she was free of her lover’s embrace, immediately retreated from the bed and seated herself in the armchair across the room from Ann in the early morning light. She couldn’t help herself, she knew, if Ann woke and rolled over and asked for a kiss, Anne would oblige and weaken.

No, she needed distance. She needed space for this conversation.

So she waited, wringing her hands together until they were reddened from friction, her hair falling around her face as she waited for Ann to wake. 

She thought briefly about donning on her day clothes, to put further distance between them, but decided against it once she heard the tell tale sounds of Ann waking. 

Ann looked around the room for her and, once she clapped eyes on her, sat up in bed. 

“Anne?” She asked, her voice soft and sleepy. Utterly lovely, as always.

Anne tightened her resolve around her like a shield, pushing her hair back behind her ear and meeting Ann’s eyes before saying, “you’re going to have to make a decision. There’s clearly more to it than your willing or able to tell me.”

Ann continued to watch her, confused and unmoving on the bed. Anne looked back down at her twisting hands before continuing: “So, he will require an answer, I assume, as much as I do to this alleged proposal.”

“He hasn’t actually asked me yet,” Ann pointed out.

“No. But for some reason it would appear to be on the cards, and it would be good to have an answer ready, so…”

Anne braced herself, steadied her voice, and said: “Ah, today’s Friday. I propose you have the weekend, to think it over, and instead of giving me your yes or no on the 3rd of April, I would like it first thing Monday morning, and then we both of us know what we’re doing.”

Anne watched Ann’s face fall, she clutched the bedsheets around her as she cried, “I can’t make such a big decision so quickly!”

Anne scratched her head and looked away from the sight of Ann descending further into nervousness, before she heard, “do you think I should marry him?”

_Do I think you should marry him? Do I think you should become just like Vere or Mariana? Do I think you should subject yourself to the life of being a clergymen’s wife, when I know I can make your happier, healthier, and you can help me improve my life with my family and my estate?_

Aloud, she scoffed and pushed down the hurt the question brought and the painful memories that came along with it before scolding Ann, “That… only you can decide that.”

Ann nodded, quelled by Anne’s obvious hurt and said, “Most people would think I’d be foolish not to at my age, wouldn’t they?” 

Anne sighed, looking for another answer but answering truthfully, “yes. Yes they would.”

“Would we still see each other?”

Anne voice hitched at that,“No. I think if you take him, you’d have to give me up.”

Ann cried desperately, her brow furrowing, “No, but not as friends. Only as this, Anne.”

Anne felt her patience crumbling into dust before her and she exclaimed: “How can we go back to common friendship now?”

Ann watched her, voiceless and scared, and Anne continued in a calmer voice, “no, you must think it through carefully, because you will have to live in the consequences whatever you decide, we both will.”

Anne gestured between them and felt a swelling sadness within her as she continued: “And there’ll be no going back on it once it’s made, but I think it would be very unlikely that we could remain friends-” Anne quelled a sob before continuing “-after all that’s passed between us.” 

Ann looked away, her face contorting into despair as tears began to fall down her cheeks at Anne’s emotional outpouring. 

“Why do I have to decide on Monday?” Ann asked, her voice breaking as she watched Anne cradle her head in her hands, rubbing her forehead and brushing her tears away. 

“Because we have to know what we’re doing.” She took a breath, sitting up and looking at Ann square in the face, “because I have to know what I’m doing.”

And suddenly Miss Anne Lister of Shibden Hall sat before Ann, her walls up to protect her from the outside world, and the Anne that would have cuddled and kissed Ann was utterly lost in the coldness of her expression. She stood up and turned her back to Ann to gather her things. 

Ann clenched the bedsheets as the tears continued to fall from her eyes as Anne gathered her clothes to leave, meeting Ann’s eyes once through the mirror before striding out the door and not looking back.

Later, at Shibden in her study, Anne took out her journal to write the events of the morning, her hands shaking slightly as she dipped her quill in the ink pot to begin:

 

_I behaved as well as I could, telling myself, ’Well, I care not how she decides; I care not much for her; the whole thing was only ever a game.’_

_As I left she hung upon me a cried and sobbed aloud at parting, saying ‘I hope we shall meet under happier circumstances.’_

_‘Well,’ said I to myself as I walked off, ‘a pretty scene we’ve had, but surely I care not much, and I shall take my time of suspense very quietly and be easily reconciled either way.’  
_

 

But as Anne lay on the floor of the blue room, her vomit before her and her dark memories of Mariana and Vere echoing in the choice before Miss Walker, she acknowledged that she did care, very much so, for the outcome. 

“Don’t you dare do this to me again,” she cried, pointing towards the heavens and reeling against the unfairness of her circumstances. She felt quite low, and in that moment, she realized she had come to care far too much for young Miss Walker.

And it was too late to take it back now.

* * *

 

After spending the weekend an agony over her sense of obligation, shame, and love for Anne, Ann penned the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and placed them in a silk purse with a letter explaining the reasoning behind her decision.

Which was not to make a decision.

After sending the fruit basket and her fate enfolded inside with a servant to Shibden, she laid down in bed and stared at the ceiling, praying for the answer she hoped Anne would draw. 

_‘Yes’_

But when James informed her that Anne was waiting in the drawing room, she was filled with dread at the prospect of seeing her, of the decision, of the circumstances surrounding it. 

So when she opened the door, she stayed away from the incensed Anne that paced about her drawing room, her endless energy coiled tight within her as she spit out, “A yes or no I would’ve know what to do with but this-” she withdrew the purse from her coat and shook it at Ann before roaring “-what am I suppose to do with this?”

She continued, her voice raised in anger and her face distorted, “I mean, do you really think, do you really think I’m someone to have my future happiness decided by fate, by which bit of paper comes out of a purse first, like a- like a raffle ticket.”

Ann stood at the door, arms resting at her sides and feeling the walls closing around her as Anne continued to shout at her and gesticulate wildly about the room before whispering, “no.”

Anne wouldn’t have it, she barked, “what?”

“N-no, I-I couldn’t-” Ann stuttered weakly. 

“What?” Anne asked again, raising her eyebrows and growing more agitated by the moment, yelling, “Ann!”

“Nothing,” she whispered, looking away from Anne’s fiery display of temper. 

Anne threw the purse away and sneered, “I’m taking it as a no.” She grabbed her hat, never having taken her coat off in her rage to have it out with Ann, and Ann felt utterly helpless to stop her from leaving her forever. 

Pacing forwards, Ann replied, “it isn’t a no.”

“Yes, well, it isn’t a yes!” Anne choked out, spinning around to face Ann with her face crumpled in sadness and anger. 

“Will you accept him?” Anne asked, her gaze unwavering as she peered at Ann.

“I don’t want to, but-”

“But?” Anne mocked her intonation, adding, “but what?”

After a beat, she screamed, “What!?”

Ann felt tears begin to fall, saying, “If I did, it would be out of duty.” 

“Duty?” Anne queried, dismissive as she continued: “what to her? To Mrs. Ainsworth?” 

“No,” Ann shook her head.

“Well, what, then?”

Ann felt herself crumbling before she could control it, the rapid fire questioning and Anne’s temperand the memories of Mr. Ainsworth sending her over the edge and before she could answer, she began to weep. Her cries echoed around the room as tears rushed down her blotchy cheeks. She fell down onto her settee, clutching at her violet dress in misery as she realized she would have to tell Anne the truth. There was no way around it, she was about to leave anyways. 

It was time.

 

* * *

 

Anne tried to watch Ann cry dispassionately from a distance, but all the fury she had felt towards the girl was melting away until she was left with only exhaustion and the need to protect her, as she always did. 

Cursing her inner weakness to feminine sentimentality, Anne sighed and kneeled down before Ann, placing a familiar hand on the back of her neck to steady her before whispering, “Ann.”

When Ann continued to sob, Anne grasped her cheeks and lifted up her head until watery cobalt eyes met her own. She continued, “Ann, talk to me. We’re adults. Nothing can be this bad-”

Ann cut her off, crying out, “I’ll never see you again!”

Anne’s eyes searched the room, her eyebrows furrowing, “What? What do you mean?”

Ann burst out, “If I tell you the truth, you won’t want anything to do with me.” She explained tearfully. 

Anne felt confusion rising within her as she watched Ann cry and her earlier anger was replaced by her curiosity to hear what Ann thought was so despicable about herself.

Placing a crooked finger beneath her chin, she raised Ann’s head so red-rimmed eyes met her own before calmly stating, “I might surprise you. Hmm?”

“It’s him,” Ann whispered, her voice lowering but steadier than before.

“Him? Him who?”

Ann looked up for a moment before saying, “The Reverend Ainsworth. I’ve been…” Ann trailed off for a moment before breathing out, “indiscreet with him.” 

Ann continued to cry, looking away from Anne in shame as Anne processed that bit of information, standing up for a moment to put some distance between them and looking down at the girl she thought she knew. The innocent girl, the one who asked her to wait. She’s already been deflowered? 

But she is crying, and heavily too. This is not regret for a young folly, Anne thought to herself. What’s going on?

Ann continued of her own volition, “he said he was in love with me, and that he wanted to marry me and she wouldn’t live long, and I didn’t want to but I didn’t know how to say no.”

_Oh, Ann_. 

It was a story Anne had heard from too many women who lay with men- they didn’t scream, so they must be complicit. Absolute folderol. 

“That’s why I was so upset when I heard that she died, because I knew it wouldn’t be five minutes until he was writing to me, and, Anne, Anne I never encouraged him. I told him I didn’t want to, but then he just… managed situations that he was alone with me, either here when they visited or at their house. Do…”

Ann gasped out, losing control of herself before adding, “do you understand? Do you understand the problem?”

Anne continued to watch Ann fall apart before her, dumbfounded that Ann had suffered so much in her young life as this horrid story outpoured from her lips.

She whispered, “he’s had intimate knowledge of me.” 

Anne felt herself growing dewy eyed at the story, the display of the woman before her, and she finally sat down beside Ann. She asked, “intimate how?”

Ann continued to cry without answering, and so Anne asked, “Kissing?”

Nod.

“Did he…. touching?”

Nod.

“Have you been connected?” Anne ignored the conflicting feelings she had about that and looked to Ann for an answer. 

Ann gasped out several breaths before whispering: “once.”

Ann continued, looking at Anne beseechingly, “Does that not put me under an obligation to him, to Mr. Ainsworth.”

Anne reached forward to grab Ann’s hands in a practiced motion of comfort before replying, “hang on. He inflicted himself on you. You were in his house, to visit your friend, his wife. You were under his protection,” Anne gasped out, cradling Ann’s head in her hand and forcing her to meet Anne’s serious expression. 

She continued, her ire growing as she continued, “in his house, and he took advantage of you.” she finished, dropping her hand and attempting to reign in her own tears at Ann’s tragic tale.

“When she left the room. But still does- morally, does that not-”

Anne interrupted, fervently denying, “No, no good God, no! Of course it doesn’t. You’re under no obligation at all because he was married for heaven’s sake!” She finished with a yell. 

Ann responded nervously, “you’re shouting, you’re cross.”

“No,” Ann replied, cradling Ann’s head once again in her hands, “I’m not shouting at you, I’m not cross at you. I’m glad-” Anne’s voice went high and she kissed Ann’s forehead to calm her frayed nerves, “I’m glad you told me, Ann.”

Tempering her emotions, she continued levelly, “Ann, you are not obligated to him.”

Ann cried, “but do you see, do you see now this is why I couldn’t say yes to you, because I was worried that all sorts that you would be cross or you would expose me and that I wasn’t even free or fit to say yes to you, and that’s why I couldn’t show you the letter, and it’s-” Ann stood up and retried the letter from the opposite end table, taking a deep breath and thrusting it at Anne for her to read, “It’s clear from the language that he uses that he already thinks I’m his. To my own little Annie from your own Thomas Ainsworth and I couldn’t tell anybody because he said it would reflect just as badly on me as it did on him.”

After the outpouring from the usually monosyllabic, reserved Ann left Anne in a momentary state of shock. She read over the letter, but before she could respond, Ann continued, “I know you’ll think I’m weak… and stupid… but you see if I’d have had someone like you in my life, this wouldn’t have happened. I would’ve had someone to talk to, someone to tell. Someone who would’ve helped me.”

Ann sunk back onto the couch, distancing herself from Anne while she continued to weep. Anne felt her heart race as she took in the flood of information, the puzzle pieces connecting in her mind. Ann’s hesitancy when they were first intimate, her nervousness, her love of affection and safety, and her reticence to accept Anne’s original proposal. All of it suddenly made sense, and Anne felt guilty for having yelled at Ann before, for having caused more emotional and mental suffering for this endearing girl. 

Reaching toward her, she gathered the crying woman in her arms and held her close, resting her chin above Ann’s golden head as she cradled her near her breast. 

“Ann,” Anne asked, “is everything you told me absolutely true?”

“Yes,” she cried, her eyes begging for Anne to believe her. Anne kissed her forehead roughly to stem her own tears that were threatening to fall.

“You do know I would’ve got you out of this scrape, don’t you,” Anne told her, wiping another tear away from Ann’s flushed cheek, “whether you’d said yes to me or not.”

Ann’s lower lip was quivering and she whispered back, “would you?”

Anne closed her eyes from the pain that small question caused her, that Ann could ever doubt her loyalty, and she brushed the letter from her lap to the floor, uttering a scathing remark, “grubby little wretch. And in a dog collar.”

“He’ll still be coming over for this position, this meeting with the church trustees. The whole thing, no doubt, is just a ruse to get nearer to me.” Before Ann could get worked up again, Anne cradled her in her arms and placed a hand upon her blonde curls, stroking back and forth. 

“Shh,” Anne gentled, rocking Ann gently, “You have nothing more to fear from him. Do you understand me?”

Ann whispered into her neck, where she was being held, “what will you do to him?”

Anne paused for a moment, a thousand satisfying scenarios rushing through her mind, half of them involving a horsewhip. She replied lowly, “I haven’t decided yet."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are appreciated! If there is a scene left out of the TV show that you would like me to write, I am happy to take requests :) I'll continue with episode 5 soon!  
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Works Cited:
> 
> Lister, Anne; Wainwright, Sally; Choma, Anne (2019). "Gentleman Jack: The Life and Times of Anne Lister the Official Companion to the BBC Series". Google Books. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
> 
> "HBO/BBC Drama Series GENTLEMAN JACK, Created, Written and Directed by Sally Wainwright, Debuts April 22 On HBO" (Press release). New York, NY: WarnerMedia. 18 March 2019. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
> 
> Whitbread, Helena, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791–1840. Virago, 1988.
> 
> Whitbread, Helena, No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister. NYU Press, 1993.


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